Drake College of Business, a for-profit higher-education company based in New Jersey, is suspending its practice of recruiting students from homeless shelters and offering them cash stipends based on attendance grades, Bloomberg News reported. The action comes nearly a week after Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported that Drake and other for-profit colleges were pressuring shelter residents to enroll and take out federal student loans to pay tuition. In an e-mail message to Bloomberg News today, Drake’s president, Ziad Fadel, said that the college’s recruiters had done nothing illegal or unethical, but that Drake was halting any recruiting at shelters while its accreditor examined the practice.
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4 Responses to College Halts Recruitment Efforts at Homeless Shelters, Pending Inquiry
willynilly - May 6, 2010 at 9:30 am
The fact that this business enterprise consciously put this egregious recruiting program in place, tells the public all they need to know about the motivation and the ill-purposed objectives of these kind of places. No inquiry is necessary. The last step in the process of placing this “school” in its rightful catagory, is to be certain that they are no where near first base in seeking accreditation from a regional accrediting body; and secondly, that they are not receiving even one cent of federal financial aid or any access to federally sponsored loan programs.
ttuenglish - May 6, 2010 at 10:02 am
As PR Expert, I find company’s response illuminating: “…the college’s recruiters had done nothing illegal or unethical…” If you do not acknowledge that recruiting students with a abysmally low chance of graduating is unethical then you do not belong in academia.This rhetoric sounds a lot more like a corporation than a college, which shows the problems with the for-profit model.
mvclibrary - May 6, 2010 at 12:30 pm
These abuses are nothing new, and they’re not limited to for-profit institutions. Check out this article for some of the same old shenanigans: http://www.riverfronttimes.com/2000-09-06/news/the-talented-mr-spellmann/ Recruit anyone who can fog a mirror, drain the federal student aid for that student, then turn them out of you religious, not-for-profit college. The for-profit boys have learned well from the example set by the not-for-profit colleges.
scottplebian - May 6, 2010 at 5:35 pm
What do you expect from for-profit schools? This kind of abuse might get worse now that the government is the only provider of student loans. College is already so expensive that I saw a bunch of students begging online for money to pay for loans at sponsormydegree.com. I can’t imagine how many of them went to a for-profit school.