Justice Served

As announced in this afternoons press the educational giant DeVry has agreed to pay $100 million dollars in the case alleging they used deceptive ads to promote their institution. Of that figure over $30 million shall be used for debt relief & forgiveness towards unpaid student loans. As you may recall, DeVry was forced to close when all Federal loans were stopped. The DeVry Education Group (DV) is one of the largest publicly held higher educational organizations in North America and today’s news put a lot of worried students and parents at ease.

The Federal Trade Commission’s end of the settlement was based upon DeVry’s claims that 90% of it’s graduates were hired for jobs in their respective fields within six months of graduation, which was wide spread through ads appearing on TV, radio, online and in other media.

This certainly isn’t the first time an educational institution has been forced to make such admissions but it is the first that developed into a very large financial payback for students and other participants. You may recall that Harvard Law School was forced to admit that far less than the reported over 95% of graduates got jobs in law. The real number was less than half that number and this is not unique to Harvard Law School or any other school. The main sources for this date came from US News & World Report and the National Association for Law Placemen.

With the push by Presidents, world leaders, and large bodies of influential people for EVERY child to get a college education as well as the far too easy to get student loans, should we be requiring these intuitions of higher education to offer some sort of guarantee? It would be balanced by the number of students with lower GPA’s or drop outs being removed from said guarantee but we’re looking for something that says some percentage of students with a GPA of 3.0 or higher shall be represented by the university in ways of marketing & job placement in order to keep their numbers high.

After all, with the expense of education now days and the pressure from employer’s to have that sheepskin, shouldn’t there be some checks and balances to prevent private & public institutions from taking unfair advantage of these students? And if properly presented, would this not provide added incentive to students to spend more time studying and avoiding those famous frat parties? We all want our children to be successful, but investing many hundreds of thousands of dollars on a toothless guarantee by some registrar is more risky than playing the market on penny stocks.

And lets not forget the fact that there are a number of kids that simply won’t make it to college. The need for technical schools that are honest and sincere, teaching a level of technical expertise that will prepare these kids to get their first job and with study, excel in their fields. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it … at the current pace, the shortage of technicians in plumbing, electrical, & mechanical will drive the hourly cost of said professionals to the same level as we are paying doctors. Yep, it’s all market driven and when your toilet is stopped up and the house is reeking, there will be no bill too high to pay to get that problem fixed.

If the new president wants to do America a favor, don’t abolish the education department; put them to work on this problem and tell them they have 18 months to develop a full fledged program to solve the problem … or they will have the opportunity to take their own credentials out into the work place and find a job on their own. As the man says “tain’t no free lunch” and it’s about time to put that into real world practice with our education community.