A For-Profit College Tries The Charter School Market

Not in Ohio, yet.....

Sounds like another company wants to get into the drop out recovery business.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/14/369925385/a-for-profit-college-tries-the-charter-school-market

In each city, a charter school called Early Career Academy planned to offer students the chance to earn associate degrees, either in network systems administration or software development, alongside their high school diplomas. Students were offered laptops to work on and ebooks to use. All for free.

"It fits the pattern of big, for-profit companies looking to diversify beyond that Title IV-based revenue model," says Kevin Kinser. Title IV refers to federal student aid such as loans and Pell Grants, which are the primary source of income for most large for-profit colleges.

"As their traditional higher education provider business has declined, they need to find other avenues to make up the revenue lost," he explained. "They also want to avoid the regulatory burden that running a college entails. So you see ITT look to the charter schools. You see Apollo [University of Phoenix] look to invest capital in start-ups. Kaplan has international plans. All of these strike me as strategies to offset the declining prospects of growing enrollment ... and the regulatory and financial problems that they have been facing."

Most recently, in February of this year, ITT became the first for-profit college to be sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency. The complaint says ITT used "aggressive" tactics to market a high-interest private loan to students between July and December 2011 and that as a practice, ITT overcharges students and misrepresents their job prospects.