Posted on 10/24/2016 10:51:48 AM PDT by reaganaut1
When the Department of Education was established in 1979, no one would have thought that it was authorized to administer the death penalty to colleges that bureaucrats wanted to get rid of. But that is exactly where we are today.
The demise of ITT Tech illustrates the unchecked power of federal regulators under our administrative law system wherein bureaucratic agencies get to act as lawmaker, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. That concept is completely at odds with the way the Founders thought government should function, a point made with great power by Professor Philip Hamburger in his recent book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (He answers that it is.)
Back in September, ITT announced that it was closing its 130 campuses located in 38 states. The company had come under fire from several state attorneys general and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, with allegations that students had been misled, taken unfair advantage of, and defrauded by ITT.
With those allegations hovering over the company, in August the Department of Education decided to require ITT to put up over $247 million as surety in to cover the taxpayers in the event that it would close and thus trigger student loan defaults. When it couldn’t do that, the Department moved to “protect” students from ITT by forbidding the company to enroll any new students for this academic year who would pay with federal student aid funds.
Since nearly all ITT students use federal grants or loans to pay their tuition, the Department’s action was tantamount to ordering ITT to shut down. With its federal lifeline cut, the company had no choice. Some 40,000 students have had their educational plans interrupted and about 8,000 employees are out of work.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
ITT was no more a fraud than state-funded institutions. Students who applied themselves benefited and got their money’s worth. Those that didn’t ended up with nothing but debts. That is true for so-called “non-profits,” too.
Like major public (and some private ) universities aren’t perpetrating a Fraud on their students!!!
Where, in Article I or in any of the Amendments, does the Constitution grant the Congress the authority to issue 'federal grans or loans' to individuals to pay their educational costs?
Nowhere, you say?
Then you're right!
The whole business must end.
ITT graduates had a much higher employment rate than most colleges.
Don’t make your enterprise totally dependent upon government money, and they’ll find it much harder to shut you down.
An ITT education in design engineering doesn’t get you there all by itself. You need experience and lots of it.
Highly inflated fraud in some cases.
On the flip side, no one forces anyone to have a degree in lesbian basket weaving.
There were people in school who would have never been able to get a degree in a decent career field like engineering or medical. They thought journalism and teaching was hard; they complained to me about how hard they had to study. If they had to spend one weekend night studying to get work done and could not go out, that was a hard work week.
ITT graduates had a much higher employment rate than most colleges.
Not true at all.
I taught at ITT for two years. (It was a paycheck.)
The counselors lied to students about the cost, quality, and job opportunities.
Many students didn’t go to state or community schools for a reason....they couldn’t handle the work.
I wasn’t allowed to fail anyone since ITT needed the students to stay in to keep the loan money coming in.
Many students dropped out and were left with horrendous loans and no education.
The credits wouldn’t transfer to state schools.
ITT was run for the stockholders, not the students. There’s nothing wrong with that but you need to give value for the money.
Frankly, it needed to close shop.
It’s hard to have any sympathy for ITT. Any business or institution that relies on government grants and loans to their customers to stay in business shouldn’t even exist.
I agree. I worked in the student loan industry over twenty years ago, and ITT Tech had a bad rep for completion and hiring even then.
It’s hard to have any sympathy for ITT. Any business or institution that relies on government grants and loans to their customers to stay in business shouldn’t even exist.
And how many ‘public’ colleges and universities would stay open if they also lost all access to government loans?
Not many, I’ll bet.
obama job creation at it’s finest
I worked with quite a few and I felt bad that they were getting ripped off.
I’m a little tech college product that took a short run of computer repair classes.
I went there in Toledo for refrigeration/AC 1974-75, did ok, graduated, tuition $1200/yr and was issued a huge textbook and a decent set of tooling and gauges. I got no complaints, and worked it that field for most of my career.
My son got his A+ certification in high school. One of his friends took classes at ITT, spent a couple of thousand bucks and never passed the test.
The big argument against these for profit schools is that students would have incurred huge debt for degrees that would give them jobs not paying enough to repay the loan. However, pick any state university or even an Ivy League school who turn out graduates with worthless degrees in peace studies, feminist theory, minority studies etc. who end up working in coffee shops and they can’t pay their loans either. Law schools are no different as they are turning out hundreds of new graduates each year who can’t find jobs. When my son took the bar exam in Minnesota several years ago 600 applicants were taking the bar exam. Assuming a low pass rate that would mean some 500 lawyers looking for work in MN that year and every year following. My son was fortunate to get hired, many of his classmates did not
The Supreme Court decides what the Constitution says, not the Constitution.
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