One of the best articles I’ve seen recently on for-profit colleges. Please, please, please read this if you or anyone in your family is thinking about a for-profit school.
From the trenches, we continue to pursue our class action against Le Cordon Bleu Portland (formerly known as Western Culinary Institute) and its parent, Career Education Corp. Consumer fraud class actions are difficult cases.
Best to avoid the damage in the first place by saying no to overpriced for-profit colleges. Don’t let the slick marketing fool you; you’re often better off at a less-costly community college.
One more thing. To our leaders in Congress, your active oversight can fix this problem. But you need to do more than regulate for the future. A generation of students are effectively underwater for life because of lax regulation. Seems to me that you need to fix this problem.
m.a. bruce says
the initial problem was not enough cooking space in the early class, (before the 45% dropout rate, that is). i don't know if they sell all those accounts to collection agencies, (for a whopping profit, still), or do their own collection and charge for those efforts, as well, but i guess i'll find out. i recently quit, 2 months into class, after learning bad things about gov. loans. now, struggling to survive, i find out my knife kit is worth maybe .30c on the dollar; similar story with uniforms. that's based on manufacturer’s online price and the incredible $800 they charge for knife kits. after hearing a different $ amount every time i asked what my final debt would be upon leaving, they are sending my acct, (massive profit and all) to collections. in my only job interview during class, the chef, a graduate of wci, wanted to know first, ‘how are your knife skills?’, which we learned ABOUT in class, but not to gain proficiency. lcbc PREPARES YOU TO PREPARE for a job, at a n inflated price that, itself, implies much more. i wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. no reflection on the instructors.
Wayne Cleveland says
What makes March 2006 the magic year.. I graduated in 2004 and am in the same boat?
David Sugerman says
You needed to file within 1-2 years of the date when you figured out that you had been deceived. That was probably no later than the day you graduated and started to looking for work. We filed the case in March 2008, so anyone who graduated within 1-2 years of that day had the benefit of the filing. That includes everyone within two years of the filing date.
David
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