At Harkin's request, the U.S. Government Accountability Office conducted an underground, "secret shopper" investigation and exposed instances of fraud at four institutions and deceptive practices at all 15 institutions it investigated. The GAO found that students are taking on tens of thousands of dollars in debt to attend these schools, and that the promises the colleges to them are making are hollow.

As we've reported on this blog all summer, the for-profit college mission is not first and foremost about education, it's about generating profits for shareholders.

As a result of these profit-driven practices, the U.S. Department of Education has proposed new regulations to ensure that students are getting their money's worth when they borrow large amounts to pay for programs that are supposed to lead to "gainful employment."

Some AFT affiliates are having firsthand experience with the incursion of corporate for-profit colleges in their regions. Michael Rosen, president of Milwaukee Area Technical College's Local 212, the AFT faculty union at the college, has been sounding the alarm in his city about the rapid installation of Everest College, a for-profit that has moved in just blocks from MATC.

Everest is part of Corinthian Colleges Inc., which appears to have some serious issues with its students being able repay their student loans.

Rosen's work caught the attention of Harriet Callier, a medical billing and records instructor at a school called High-Tech Institute, now renamed Anthem College by its corporate owner. She contacted him to express concerns about what she saw happening to the students she teaches. The current issue of AFT On Campus  tells Callier's story-and also provides insight into how state agencies are responding to the need to monitor this booming industry.

It's a changing terrain, notes Wisconsin Educational Approval Board (EAB) school administration consultant Patrick Sweeney. He pointed On Campus to some of the public record correspondence between the EAB and Callier's employer, High-Tech Institute. Sweeney describes a visit to the school by EAB representatives as "frustrating and disappointing" because it "revealed a multitude of institutional problems consistent with all of High-Tech's past problems, as documented in many student complaints to the EAB."

He also shared letters that illuminate the curriculum model used by the University of Phoenix and other for-profit chains, which is designed to keep new students enrolling and taking courses, but is significantly less concerned with student success. As Sweeney notes in his letter: 

In the Phoenix business model few adults who start their programs will survive through graduation. ... But, it's okay. ... In [this] model, the large number of enrollment counselors with strictly measured metrics for calls per day, new enrollments, and retention into the second week of the second course secures a steady stream of new enrollees."

In short, it's a model that works well to keep federal financial aid dollars and private loans fueling the bottom line of the business, but not one that works so well for the faculty and students.