ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants | Hacker News Reader

ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

washingtonpost.com

204 pointsinputcoffee130 comments

This is incremental progress, it's just one school. But a crazy step in the right direction. For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation (high-cost low-value educations) allowed to rise up out of the failings of our strained public institutions (not enough capacity to meet demand).

What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons. It's like all that "change" we were hoping for with Obama seems to be coming at once.

When the discontinuation of federal prison article came up on hacker news I commented, "Now if we could only outlaw for-profit schools!"

What's wrong with someone educating people and making a profit while doing it?

Exactly, there are a lot of good private universities.

In the USA, private does not mean for-profit. The good private universities are still non-profit.

There's nothing wrong with for-profit schools in theory. It's a socio-economic problem. There's already so much money flowing through the US university system that the vast majority of for-profit schools are predatory institutions targeting lower-class, under-educated people. Their primary business model is to convince students to take out loans to pay for a white-collar education that won't make them any more employable.

The "good private universities" may be "non-profit" in some strict sense, but in the case of the big Ivies (e.g., Harvard, my alma mater), they could be described as a hedge fund with, oh, yes, by the way, a school attached, or, alternatively, as a huge Federally-funded research institution.

The educational part seems to be a facade for the big money/big institution part.

(Bitter much? Sure. ;-)

What good is a "hedge fund" you can't take the money out of? The Ivies have massive endowments, but that money can only be spent on the school.

I went to a school like that. They provided grant-only aid to cover tuition and living expenses for students from most of the US income distribution. I think you will have a harder time finding sob stories about my classmates (at least since the no-loan policies were enacted).

> There's nothing wrong with for-profit schools in theory.

Absolutely.

The problem is our university system as it stands is now really structured for profitability. The system was originally designed to cater to wealthy students and when public universities came to be, they kept the same model, and used tax subsidies to maintain it.

An effective for-profit education system would look nothing like our current university system. But a higher education system that doesn't match our current system isn't useful for students because the majority of them are looking for degrees, not necessarily an education.

Theoretically there's nothing wrong with for-profit schools, but the current educational climate prevent them from working. For now, for-profit education really only has a place in domains that can be taught adequately in less than a year and where the student's outcome can be readily assessed.

> Their primary business model is to convince students to take out loans to pay for a white-collar education that won't make them any more employable.

I think this applies to far more schools than just private for-profits like ITT. There are many recent graduates from non-profit public schools that have mountains of debt and very little job prospects.

The issue is that the profit comes before the education. These institutions prey on low-income people who for whatever reason couldn't get into public institutions. When the students graduate they have huge debts, typically larger than those that went to public institutions, but worse their degrees are often worthless. The accreditation for these institutions often come from companies owned by the same corporation. The accreditation means nothing so your credits can't transfer. Do a google search, you'll find article after article about students who went to these schools trying to get a better life and just made their lives worse. They went from poor, to hopelessly poor. Whereas before they were poor with bad job prospects they're now poor with bad job prospects and HUGE debts. They often just stop paying them. It's one of the biggest contributors to our student debt problem.

>The issue is that the profit comes before the education. ...

That sounds like a fully-general argument against provision of any good by a for-profit business: "The issue with private farms is that the profit comes before the food." "The issue with private semiconductors is the profit comes before the computational efficiency."

True, profits do bring the potential for fraud, abuse, etc., but obviously there are at least some situations where that can all be contained. What's special about education per se?

You cite abuses, but are those artifacts of the for-profit part, or the "students generally don't have good information about what a given school will do for their career"? I mean, there are lots of cases of students at "non-profit" public universities who are drowning in debt from a worthless degree.

>What's special about education per se?

In the US? The fact that it gets paid for with loans that aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

I meant, what's special in terms of profits skewing incentives.

I would argue it's a combination of the high cost (we aren't talking about people ending up with a few thousand dollars of debt), the fact that it might take years to determine if any given school is actually not terrible, and the fact that "education" itself is given special considerations over many products and services.

The problem with for-profit prisons is the misalignment between what's good for profit and what's good for prisoners. Where the prisoners can't "vote with their wallets" to counter-balance this misalignment.

I don't see a similar issue with for-profit schools. In order to attract students they need to to provide good education and foster a good reputation.

Hmm, is that really true though? If so, ideally, people would choose an institute that teaches them as well as possible for as little as possible money. But that's not at all what people do: they prefer prestigious schools that (hopefully) lead to good job prospects.

Prestige is a funny thing - the fact that a school is hard to get into and expensive may well raise prestige, regardless of educational outcomes.

Don't forget, it's very hard for students and (future) employers/investors/business partners to tell how good an education is. It's quite difficult even for the institutes themselves and any oversight that may exist.

That means incentives aren't as simple as you suggest. Sure, at some very, very long term horizon, better education helps an institute. But that may well be multiple generations away; much too far away to work well in an open market. Especially since there is so much other noise that can be optimized instead.

By constrast, the state's interest in decent education is much more straighforward (not that the politicians making the choices have their incentives straight, but that's another story). In particular, whereas it's clearly in the for-profit institutes interest to milk students no matter how and no matter how unfairly. This is a normal risk in any organisation - but the point is that for-profit organisations aren't magic optimization bullets. These downsides don't need to be a problem, but they do need to be dealt with, and there needs to be some upside to the deal too. What's the upside here?

I think you're clearly right for short-enough courses with clearly demonstrable and measurable outcomes. And I bet you're right in the abstract too, in the sense that "it should be possible to align incentives such that..." - but I'm not sure it holds given the current way education is structured.

Real-world evidence certainly doesn't seem to suggest profit-motive works very well here.

Not to mention that for-profit schools appeal to (some would say prey upon) students from blue collar or lower class families for whom ANY degree seems worth whatever you might pay for it.

If you're from generations of laborers who have never gone to college, then taking out a predatory loan to go to a predatory school that gives you a somewhat useless degree seems like a good idea at first glance.

It doesn't seem like the selectivity/prestige effect applies to people who go to for-profit schools. Since prestige is subjective, for-profit schools can market themselves as prestigious while expanding to provide seats to anyone who can obtain a student loan. The government should not be complicit in this deception, hence the action here.

> I don't see a similar issue with for-profit schools. In order to attract students they need to to provide good education and foster a good reputation.

Or they just need to dupe people who don't know any better.

A lot of the people who end up at these places are poor, don't have friends or relatives with college degrees, didn't get good advice, and simply don't know how to recognize a scam. Now they have six figures of student loan debt they can't get rid of, and a low-prestige degree that many employers won't even consider.

I can't rigorously prove it, but I'm pretty sure the people complaining about for-profit prisons wouldn't change their minds even if there were a system of "staple $N/month to every prisoner and they can go to whatever private prison will have them".

After all, we have basically that system for for-profit schools and ...

All for profit schools are pretty terrible. I am assuming this is true of for profit prisons as well. Having to choose among different terrible choices doesn't seem like a solution.

Typically, it's the potential to choose that leads to improvement, across a wide range of goods. To claim that it's all different for schools, you'd need to demonstrate a general model of the dynamics.

And FWIW, the coding bootcamp I went to (for profit) did more for my career than my non-profit university.

Nothing, if they also accept the downside risk of financing a crap education. The default rates for many private universities are astounding - and the taxpayer helps backstop them from losses via federal student loans.

In principle there's nothing wrong with for-profit schools which train people on specific job skills or certification programs. There are some valuable skills that non-profit community colleges can't practically teach. But still the federal government should only support financial aid for such schools if they demonstrate a high rate of job placement for students who complete the program.

You're right, there are many examples of great for-profit institutions. The problem is there's little differentiating them from "predator" schools. One issue is information asymmetry.

There is informational asymmetry in every transaction (as well as in non-profit schools); this is a red herring (unless you can show that it is causing a specific, large, unsolved problem). The current administration has repeatedly demonstrated hostility towards for-profit schools, and has chosen to use discretionary enforcement of rules against them rather than enforcing standards universally, because they know that the standards would hit many non-profit schools as well. I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non-profits.

The existence of information asymmetry isn't per se the problem, no, of course not. But it's not a red herring to mention if we can look at the world and see the information asymmetry doing active harm, which I think most commenters here would agree with. The opinion that large numbers of for-profit schools are convincing people to give them money and then providing almost nothing useful in return is so widespread now that I'd assume it to be everyone's default unless they specifically mention otherwise.

I would agree that "[t]he opinion that large numbers of... schools are convincing people to give them money and then providing almost nothing useful in return is so widespread now that I'd assume it to be everyone's default unless they specifically mention otherwise." According to the signalling theory of education and the opinion of many commenters here, a great deal (possibly a strong majority) of post-secondary education is a complete waste of time and money. It's not that I think these schools are providing useless experience and knowledge, I just think the non-profits are doing about the same.

Graduation rates at non profit schools are appalling. University of Pheonix routinely graduates less than 20% of its students within six years. Even if all of the benefit is signaling, which I disagree with, the students at many for profit institutions aren't even getting that benefit.

Many state colleges have low 6 year graduation rates too (as they vary widely), should they be shut down too? Is there any reason 25% or 30% are unacceptable, but 50% is fine?[1]

[1] http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/

A 50% graduation rate is literally double a 25% graduation rate. You're arguing that the only reason for the US government to care about the fact that students at for-profit institutions are half as likely to graduate is because they've got a grudge against them, as though this is some minor difference that no-one should care about.

And, sure, a 50% graduation rate at a state college is a big problem that should be investigated as well. But it's definitely not true that "all of the state colleges" have this problem, whereas it (as least seems to be) ubiquitous among for-profit schools.

>>Graduation rates at non profit schools are appalling. University of Pheonix routinely graduates less than 20% of its students within six years.

I am talking about both (for and not-for profit) universities.

Isn't graduation a responsibility of a student too? If a student is not graduating, isn't there a chance that he/she is not sufficiently working for it?

If a student is not graduating, isn't there a chance that he/she does not have what it takes to learn a subject?

The students should do a little bit of homework before joining any university: does the university seem suitable for me? do I seem suitable for the university? do I think I am capable of handling the study work? what is the quality of the faculty? what the almuni are saying about this university? what the other academics are saying about this university?

If a student cannot or will not do this little bit of homework, then I guess he/she deserves to be surprised (may get a good surprise if lucky else bad surprise).

No doubt ITT's problem is that Kaplan University had already hired Anita Dunn and there wasn't another White House staffer ready to transition to the private sector.

Kaplan University? Somehow affiliated with the test prep company?

"Department officials say they are acting out of concerns raised by the for-profit chain’s accreditor, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, that ITT is not living up to the demands of its accreditation. ITT is under threat of having its accreditation revoked"

Thanks, but I read the article. Do you have any additional insight?

>There is informational asymmetry in every transaction

Yes, but informational asymmetry is a much bigger problem for larger, less frequent decisions, like buying a house, or going to college.

With small, frequent decisions, like buying groceries, you can quickly learn from your mistakes and the harm done from potentially choosing an inferior/overly expensive grocer a few times is small.

With college, if you don't figure out that the educational provider was poor until after you've graduated, you're already wasted tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life for a useless degree. That's a much bigger issue.

> if you don't figure out that the educational provider was poor until after you've graduated

Is using google that difficult?

After all, I went to college before the internet, and didn't have any trouble finding reviews of the various options, and used that to form a list to apply to. With google it's a few minutes' job.

There's never been less information asymmetry.

So you base your life-changing decisions on Google?! That's smart, go on, you'll go far...

What source of information do you suggest starting with when researching which colleges to attend?

> I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non-profits.

This seems fair to me. You can argue that wasted money at NFP schools ends up in someone's pocket, but bald faced "every buck not spent educating you" going into the pocket of capital seems worse.

If the outcomes at FP higeher education aren't better, why not avoid funneling federal money (in the form of no interest loans, etc) directly in private profits?

Non-profits are often compared by examining their overhead as a percentage of total spending, rather than their efficacy per dollar (or overall). This holds back many great charities, and benefits others which consistently waste money on doomed projects with low overheads. It seems to be just as wrong to assume that retained earnings or dividends are wasted overhead and compare organizations on that basis alone.

Honest question: what are some examples of great for-profit institutions?

There are options beside for-profit and non-profits founded out of academic interest. For instance companies can get together and found institutions of higher education to ensure the education of the future workforce for them.

Absolutely - if you can be both regionally and nationally accredited go for it.

But most of these schools are in the "credits earned may not transfer" class, at which point the only thing you have going for you is vocational (which has merit). But if you're a hybrid or a degree awarding institution that no other schools recognize, then that's a problem and there's near zero value to what you're offering (which isn't to make it sound cliquey, but still).

I agree with what you and others are saying in general but "credits earned may not transfer" might as well apply anywhere. Between state/city university system, community college, and top-tier private college I had a hell of a time getting any credits to go anywhere. (Including for very run-of-the-mill, non-"core", non-specialized subjects.)

I had a hard time convincing a Community College here that they should accept my VCE from Australia as being equivalent to a high school diploma (it is) and not making me sit an equivalency exam... only made more ironic by the Bachelor's degree that I also had.

How about let individuals decide if a school is good, and not the federal government? AKA Capitalism.

Sounds good to me! No more federal student loans!

Precisely.

In that same vein why do public schools get to saddle kids with an average of $30k in debt and leave them with the prospect of $8/hour jobs as many degrees do? Where's the outrage over public schools who do the exact same thing?

A school's main objective is not to make you employable.

A school's main objective is whatever they say at any given moment to you. You've got mission statements, brochure advertisements, orientation presentations, presentations to high schools, whatever is said in private from your guidance advisor. There will be PLENTY of times when you hear that they are focused on "preparing you for the real world" or they talk about growth. Funny as vague a language they might use, I've never once read a university (and I've worked at two of them) say that their main objective ISN'T to make you employable.

No, but many do have full time employees in their "career services" center working to place you with an employer.

http://foster.uw.edu/careers/career-services/

An education's main goal is not to make you employable.

A school, on the other hand, charges tuition, and therefore any transaction between the student and the school must be viewed under the lens of a financial transaction.

There's plenty of outrage over that too, it's just not in this thread, because the article was about for-profit colleges.

> There are some valuable skills that non-profit community colleges can't practically teach.

For example? Out of hand I can't think of anything obvious - but I only really knows how the system works in Germany, which is quite different indeed to the US system.. so that might be the reason why I can't.

I get what you're saying, but I think there is in principle something wrong.

The theory of markets is that even if a company is staffed by the greediest sons of bitches, market mechanisms will force them to converge on delivering high customer value. But markets work best when you have savvy customers that purchase frequently, can quickly evaluate results, and can easily try other suppliers.

Unfortunately, none of that is true for education. Most customers purchase just one degree. They are by definition ignorant about the topic. Switching schools is hard. It takes years to find out if the education is really any good in the job market. The barrier to entry for new schools is very large.

So even in principle I think there's good reason to be suspicious of for-profit education.

And besides what you've already correctly noted, the theory of markets is just that, a theory. A very simplistic, idealized model that very quickly diverges from reality.

Oh, definitely. In theory, theory and practice are the same. But in practice...

> What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons.

The Administration has been heightening scrutiny of colleges receiving federal aid money, particularly for-profit institutions, for some time. The ITT action echoes the prior action against Corinthian.

I see little difference between large state schools and for profits. Plus there are plenty of "NON-PROFITS" which are soaking up the aid as well; its just a convenient classification; worse they are so to protect their endowments from taxation and such. So why excuse schools like them when non-profit can exploit the tax payer more than for-profits?

Old article http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/take-away-harva...

The announcements are all coming at once, but decisions like these take a long long LONG time to percolate through the federal bureaucracy. Not quite 8 years, but I would expect they've had contingencies for going down this road kicking around for at least a year or so. I don't think they're just impulsively scrambling to fulfill all their whims, they're just striking now while they have the political capital and the opposition is too distracted and demoralized to make a fuss.

> For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation

I dont understand. ANY for profit? Like Apple or Ford?

Or just educational institutions? If just educational institutions, what is special about that sector that makes them a plague?

Plus anyone who thinks that "Public" schools are not for profit hasn't looked too closely.

My "Public" University was basically a football program which had classes to try and justify its existence.

Think Stanford isn't for profit? Harvard? University of California?

The only difference is who is making the profit an what their incentives are.

ITT doesn't make money if its students don't get jobs. Does UC Santa Cruz really care more?

The decision is specifically targeting for-profit degree mills.

The problem is that these institutions provide expensive educations, paid for by people taking out student loans (which the institutions actively encourage). However, these same institutions don't provide any sort of education that would give their students even a remote chance of paying off the student loans on any reasonable timeframe.

This creates a system of perverse incentives where the degree mill is essentially farming student loan money, screwing over both the student and the government in the process.

My read on the news is that the policy is supposed to stop exactly this phenomenon.

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people going to ITT-esque schools are getting Pell Grants (free money, not loans) first and foremost to cover their costs.

I didn't even know this was a thing until after I graduated (I never got a Pell Grant because my parents made too much money).

Some schools have over 90% of their students funding their entire costs through Pell Grants (look at University of Puerto Rico or Interamerican University of Puerto Rico for some extreme examples).

It looks like ITT does/did have a large proportion of students with Pell Grants -- 23,500 out of 57,000 students. The tuition figures I can find for ITT are $18,000 / year, while the average Pell Grant to an ITT student was $1800 / year.

So 40% of ITT students got 10% of their tuition from ITT, and ITT got 4% of its revenue from Pell Grants.

The 10% number is really interesting, where are these students getting the other 90%?

To me it feels like it can't have just been paid in cash, because if you have $16,000 per year just lying around... you are probably in a situation where you can find better options than ITT.

The reason for-profit educational institutions are a plague is that the US government provides for a special class of loans to allow people to go to college without having the cash up front.

This special class of loans has both a relatively low interest rate (making them appealing for consumers) and cannot be defaulted on, an important feature when there is no collateral for a loan. (This feature is not needed, for instance, when you buy a home, because if you default on your mortgage they can take your home, which you put up as collateral.)

This created the opportunity for investors to create educational institutions with a thin veneer of respectability, suck in any student who could qualify for loans, and funnel that money back to the investors. Which many did.

Removing the eligibility for this special class of loan for (all, or just the known offenders) for-profit universities removes this opportunity without actually outlawing for-profit universities. This opportunity only existed because of the federal government meddling in the free market, so everyone should be happy.

A few years ago I had to make several hires in cities away from the main operations of our business. These were technical positions, but not really highly skilled positions - think geek squad level proficiency. Many of the candidates came out of ITT, and to be honest they were among the best candidates for this level position, or at least they interviewed the best. I got the impression that ITT spends a lot of time refining interview techniques - amusingly, at the end of the interview each ITT candidate asked us the same 3 questions almost verbatim, I'm certain those questions were drilled in to them as part of mock interviews. They were good questions, I wouldn't have thought anything of it until the 3rd or 4th time it happened and I started to notice the pattern.

From that experience, I have a hard time writing off ITT + similar as worthless or even predatory. I don't know what these people paid for there education, maybe it was enough that they'll never be able to get a good enough job to get out of debt, but it certainly seems like it was worth something. These people were certainly employable, and IMO moreso on average than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds who didn't have any secondary education to speak of.

How many of them did you end up hiring? That's not sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious.

My experience with ITT tech candidates was the opposite. When interviewing for a datacenter tech position, the candidates were hit and miss on basic sysadmin questions, and seemed to have never seen computer hardware before. To be fair, rackmountable datacenter-style computers look quite a bit different on the outside from the more commonly seen towers and laptops you'll find on a person's desk in an office. But once you open one up, basic components are similar enough that they should be easy to identify. DIMMs are DIMMs, hard drives are hard drives, etc. But when you point to a power supply and tell me that it is the CPU because it has all the wires, or tell me that the video card you're holding is a sound card, you should not have passed the computer hardware class requisite for your degree.

We probably hired ~7 altogether. Some were great, some mediocre as you'd expect. Honestly I don't know that they would have been any better at answering the questions you referenced, but I do think that on average they would have done better than others who applied but didn't have any secondary education. That indicates to me that the value of the ITT degree is >0. Whether or not the value of the degree is enough to make up for what they paid, I honestly don't know - although several of them had used military money to get the degree so they weren't really out much.

Sounds like the very oldschool Novell "A+" training materials would have been a lot cheaper for them, and actually equipped them to identify fundamental pieces of x86/x86-64 hardware.

What were the three questions?

I wish I could remember. I think one of them was something along the lines of 'what would you expect from an ideal candidate for this position?'

I'm torn on this. Understand, I have little love for ITT, and I got my 4 year degree from there. In hindsight, I wish I'd done community college and the local university instead. I honestly believe I'd have had a better curriculum, better books and a better ratio of instructors who cared to ones who didn't. I believe I'd have had to take on less student loan debt, as well.

That said, suppose ITT Tech does lose its accreditation, closes, etc. Where does that leave me and the other graduates who actually do have a modicum of knowledge and competence? Are our degrees automatically scrubbed from history, having never been -- leaving us unqualified to hold our current jobs or any future ones that require a college degree? Do our degrees become a black mark against us, nullifying any experience displayed on the same resume? Or will it just be a non-event that nobody notices or cares about?

Degrees from these sorts of institutions are already arguably a black mark. I've seen this come up a few times in /r/sysadmin, and to some people, attending a school like ITT displays a shocking inability to do even the most cursory research before making a huge life decision. Fair or not, you can be almost certain you are not being considered for some positions because you attended ITT.

> attending a school like ITT displays a shocking inability to do even the most cursory research before making a huge life decision.

Meh. Again, torn. I can understand the sentiment having had my own frustration with interviewing ITT tech grads years later. And it seems somewhat fair to hold that attitude against a recent graduate, considering the allegations have been around for some years now. But almost 15 years ago, with most accusations having not yet been levied and internet access not as widespread, "the most cursory research" wouldn't have likely have lead one to warnings about the school.

I shouldn't worry about it terribly. What's done is done and the only thing that can be done for it is to do the best work I can, and let the results speak for themselves.

I remember 15 years ago or thereabout and ITT Tech was advertising on daytime television. When was the last time a reputable institution of higher learning had a television advertisement strategy, let alone on daytime television. Their model has been predatory since day 1, and it wasn't too hard to see through it.

That's absolutely right, I'd actually prefer to hire someone without a degree and a strong desire to learn than someone with a degree from ITT

Your degree is still technically valid because it was given while ITT still had its accreditation.

This might be a very cynical response, but... I don't think it would be more of a black mark on your resume than it already was. There's already a strong stigma against ITT for mostly the same reasons that ITT might lose accreditation.

Its been a black mark for a while. If you have plenty of prior work experience I would completely omit the education section in your CV.

This applies to any college, but an important thing to do with CC + state university is to pick a good location for your field. I'm graduating from a state university in a part of NY that isn't the city, and because of my location, I've not been able to have a single internship, or any other in person relevant work experience at all. Here's a screenshot I took a while ago: http://i.imgur.com/5vnfuY6.png

This is for a region that encompasses at least 10 counties and a population of over 3 million. But there's a big problem there: it's not NYC. The one internship that I was able to apply to was with the local power company, which I found through my school's jobs/internships section on its website, which ended up being a dubious thing that accepts applications from any major. Of course I didn't get it, being in my third year, having an amount of side projects (handmade emulators, assemblers, games, etc) and group work experience with online collaborative projects (large online projects involving multiple languages/frameworks/version control systems) far above the norm for students around here in the 3rd year, having a good gpa, etc - they either weren't accepting computer science students in the first place, or someone else in compsci got it who either had more experience or had connections inside the company.

I have to say that the classes I took at the CC and the state university were generally informative/interesting and well-taught, and the schools were nice in a lot of other ways, but the location is doing me in. The one and only person looking for anything programming-related at the career fair was someone who needed something done about an old database backend on their website that the original developers left in a broken state, and of course I never heard back from them after giving them my resume I had to spend all that time making and printing just for that one occasion.

Some will suggest remote work as a response to this problem, but in practice it's extremely rare to actually find real remote work that isn't a scam and/or someone trying to get you to work for free (this one specifically happened to me after I finally thought I found a real taker posting on the reddit online job subreddit for a while - some guy with a shady company that had changed names for years with some vague description full of meaningless technobabble, offering to pay in equity that would never materialize to anything), as someone still in college without work experience.

Now because of my location, I'm going to be at a significant disadvantage when I do move to a suitable location after graduating and try to find work. From what I've read from a lot of sources, graduating without any internships is one of the worst things you can do. I might not even find anything at all once I graduate unless I come up with some viable startup idea, and even then that'll probably just give me even more debt.

If I'd gone to college and resided there in NYC or another city in the first place, I would've had opportunities to get the necessary internship experience and I would've ended up with useful connections - recruiters from companies even go to college campuses to recruit sometimes, but only in major cities. You hear about people graduating with jobs in these companies secured already, but it's always a college somewhere like the middle of silicon valley.

Now, I'm in a position where it's questionable if I'll even be able to get that first programming job before the time since graduating becomes large enough to be a major red flag. I could easily be permanently unemployable in programming if posts like this are to be believed: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4yfcc0/i...

At least the minimum payments for federal student loans are easily manageable with retail or fast food wages if you live with your parents, if it comes to that.

Your link and its discussion are leaving out an important factor in all of this: how good is the candidate, actually?

If you're actually a shitty coder, then it wouldn't be too surprising that after 500 applications you will still not get an offer.

Now if you're somewhere around the middle of the pack, then you'll find a job sooner or later, it just depends on the terms you're willing to accept.

"ITT is barred from awarding raises, paying bonuses or making severance payments to its executives or paying dividends without the department’s approval."

Wow. How do we make that happen for TBTF financial companies?

You lobby your Congressional representatives. Elizabeth Warren has been kicking ass and taking names, but can't do it all alone.

What took so long?

No seriously. With all the articles we read about predatory practices, and various TV segments, what takes so long for things to fall into place?

I wonder if there is a good way to distribute information about school quality. And that applies to not-for-profit schools as well.

Collect metrics, make sure you give them to the purchaser at decision time. Akin to labels on food. If the for-profit or non-profit has great placement and great training, good for them.

Hard to regulate what everyone wants I suppose. There are many schools like this around me and I know more people that went to these schools, both young and old, than I do people that went to an actual college.

And yea, most of them are still out of work...but for what ever reason they don't seem to mind.

Took a long time to take action against corrinthian colleges.

2007:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-10-18-col...

2008:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/graduates-193364-job-stud...

This year:

http://college.usatoday.com/2016/03/25/former-corinthian-col...

Unfortunately the damage done by these institutions is so great that it's ruined the credibility of getting many degrees or specialized training and all while saddling students with lifetime debt to the detriment of the national debt.

People really need to go to jail for this fraud. In some places I'm sure they are dragged out into the street and shot. I'm not advocating that . . . maybe one in the leg.

> What took so long?

The Education Department action actually is a late part of the process, and a result of the accreditation problems the school is having, which result from the financial problems they are having, which are in part due to the SEC (2015) and CFPB (2014) lawsuits they are dealing with over different kinds of fraud related to student loans, which were the earlier parts of the government action against ITT.

And this article isn't even about the first step in the Department of Education action, but an escalation of that action.

The worst thing about ITT Tech (the stupid for profit scam school) is the problem it causes for the employees of ITT, the big defense contractor/technology company, which has nothing to do with the tech school. The "real" ITT has had its name dragged through the mud by these bullshit artists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exelis_Inc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation

http://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-corp-to-buy-exelis-for-4-...

http://www.itt.com/Home/

So you worked at ITT in a senior technical engineering or management role, put that on your resume. Looking for a new job, good luck watching it get shitcanned by HT departments where somebody is scanning through resumes and will discard anything with "ITT" on it. Not fair, and lazy, but it happens.

Even though their name is simply ITT now (ITT Inc) I think I would put the old name International Telephone & Telegraph on my resume.

Know some people who worked for mid-size defence contractors (like EDO) that were acquired by ITT prior to 2012, even though they were receiving paychecks from "ITT" when they moved on, they put the name of the original easily googleable defense contractor on their resumes.

http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-education-b...

An non-paywalled link.

Please lets not dignify this sham of a business be referred to as a "University."

I'm going to call BS on nearly everything said here about for profit schools. While I don't particularly care if ITT can't accept people relying on federal loans, I do believe that people aren't being duped by crappy schools so much as they are falling for them. Sure, the commercials have been everywhere for years, but it's really not hard for even the dumbest of dumb to type "ITT sucks" into Google and find all sorts of legitimate negative reviews. I have been to two trade schools for different careers; I chose them because there was almost nothing but positive reviews about them on the internet. I suspect that people attending scam schools have poor shenanigan-sensing skills and may subconsciously think that commercials on TV provide some sort of legitimacy. This is why I have no sympathy for the people who attended "Trump University", as at the very least you should go into such a program assuming there's a high chance it will sick and have an escape plan ready. But my generation doesn't seem to do that often and would rather rely on the safety nets provided by their parents and the state. Actually, it is a good thing that they can no longer take students with federal loans because those will be the same students whose ineptitude will fail them and then they will want the government to "forgive" their debt. LOL

Haven't read the piece.

This is a very interesting headline, though, since as I understand it the federal nondiscrimination requirements for universities are tied to the fact that students receive federal funding, and when universities tried to point out that they can't tell whether a student's bank account has been filled by a government loan or some other means they got shot down.

They cannot see if the student is getting financial assistance in the way of food stamps, for example, but the student loan and grant program isn't like that. The federal money goes to the school first, and then anything above and beyond that will be deposited in the student's account. Which means students at this school now can either pay cash or get unsubsidized, non-garunteed funding through the private market, probably needing a cosigner or good credit. Some religious schools opt for this to be free from some types of federal standards. They may have other sorts of financial options available, but I'm not sure.

This is directly contradicted by https://www.justice.gov/crt/title-vi-legal-manual#Direct :

> Federal financial assistance may be received directly or indirectly.(11) For example, colleges indirectly receive Federal financial assistance when they accept students who pay, in part, with Federal financial aid directly distributed to the students. Grove City College v. Bell, 465 U.S. 555, 564 (1984)

Here's a summary from wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX ) of Grove City:

> The Court decided that since Grove City College was only receiving federal funding through the grant program, only that program had to be in compliance. The ruling was a major victory for those opposed to Title IX, as it made many institutions' sports programs outside of the rule of Title IX and, thus, reduced the scope of Title IX.[3] The ruling, however, was short-lived. The Civil Rights Restoration Act was passed in 1988 which extended Title IX coverage to all programs of any educational institution that receives any federal assistance, both direct and indirect.

(emphasis mine)

So, you're just plain wrong as to the state of the law; if the government gives somebody a big pile of cash, and they use it to pay for college, all federal regulations apply to the school. It is not necessary for the school to receive, distribute, or know about the federal money.

This doesn't change the fact that most federal loan and aid money goes directly to the school first. I'm not even sure if one can get the federal loans without working with the school.

It just appears that there are a few grant programs that pay directly to the student. This doesn't change the way the loans are generally processed.

This is specifically one institution that is at risk for having its accreditation revoked.

Whether for-profit or non-profit (yeah right) most upcoming freshman shouldn't be eligible for any of these student loans. They are all predatory, and these students have no credit history. I'd abolish loans for education completely and watch the cost of college and books drop back to affordable prices.

As a private university with access to federal student loans, you get a firehose of financing, but aren't exposed to any downside from the defaults. Students and taxpayers are the bagholders, and you've already cashed the check.

We should also stop allowing all colleges (including public ones) to graze on the huge loans that their students get. If there were not endless federal loans, public schools wouldn't be able to endlessly raise their tuition.

"ITT is no longer allow to new enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants"

washington post is no longer allow to cheque there articles.

Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education. Yes, some of these are a shame, but the student might still learn something. And there's also the issue of time and scheduling. Many older people don't have the time to go to a traditional college and taking a 1 year program at night for a "2 year associates degree" fits them better.

Even worse still, most of these tech type schools around where I am are "non-profit". Not sure what that means or whats the difference, but they are just as much as a shame. One is some "art institute". I knew a girl who's dad paid $30K for her to go there for a year. She graduated but only worked briefly afterwards, and then couldn't get employed again. There is another aviation institute near me (also non-profit). Again $30K for 1 year of schooling. Although most could get a job afterwards, they found out working at McDonald's was far better than crawling around in a 110 degree aircraft fuel tank checking for leaks for $15hr.

I think the government has a right to ensure that the aid it pays out for an education is actually going towards an education, and not a front for siphoning federal aid for the enrichment of executives and shareholders.

>not a front for siphoning federal aid for the enrichment of executives and shareholders.

So many public and private non-profit universities are going to wet themselves if anyone starts enforcing that rule. Ok, they don't have shareholders, but it's well documented that the increasing cost of university and college educations is largely driven by administrative overhead and not paying professors, adjuncts and lecturers.

The increase in administrative overhead and such is more a case of the modern customer. Comparing private non profit universities and these BS places is stretching too far.

On the customers - the ability to attract modern students rests more on amenities like dining halls and dorms, not on the academics. Sad, but ultimately true.

This kind of competition is only possible due to federal aid. There is a certain amount of non-educational amenities being provided, but it's trivial to find articles like these

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873233168045781614...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-administr...

That document the growth in non-teaching administrative and professional staff at universities. Staff that grow at more than double the rates of enrollment and teaching positions.

It's not about barring anyone from an education, but about keeping federal aid from going to them.

Though, based on the article the fact that they're a for-profit institution seems tangential to the actual reason they're not allowed to accept federal aid because they're no longer accredited.

> Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education.

Not sure how you got that from the linked article.

Here is the issue:

ITT is under threat of having its accreditation revoked, which could lead its 137 campuses to close and result in tens of thousands of students seeking loan forgiveness.

The federal government stands to lose millions of dollars in student loan repayments if ITT loses accreditation. Same thing happened with Corinthian Colleges last year - https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/announcements/corinthian

The government has no right to bar you from traveling.

The government has no constitutional obligation to pay for your plane ticket.

So why are they paying the 'proverbial plane ticket' in this case? I think that's what the OP is saying here.

Because we decided we/they should, for equality of opportunity & economic benefit.

We build city parks because we think they are good. That doesn't mean that city parks are a basic human right constitutionally owed to us by the federal government.

> Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education. Yes, some of these are a shame, but the student might still learn something.

That's some of the most threadbare reasoning I've ever seen on HN.

I think the way it started is that the agency threatened to take ACICS off the approved agencies for accreditation.

This could be good for ITT going fully private. Much more control of it's product.

Now if we could just get them disallowed from running terrible TV advertisements...

I am an ITT Tech graduate who paid their way through school using federal loans.

I earned my A.A.S in Electronic and Computer Engineering Technology and my B.S. in Electronic and Communications Engineering Technology from ITT Tech. I started the process in 2001. My total student loan debt was over $60K when I graduated but I knew that would be the case going in. I don't buy this crap about 18 years olds not knowing what they are getting into.

While my program of study was electronics engineering I always intended on working in IT. I wanted to get my degree in electronics engineering because I felt I would get more out of an instructor led education in electronics than I would in IT. After graduation my first job was an desktop support specialist for a software company which turned into a junior system administrator position one year later. After one more year I switched to my current job where I was hired as system administrator and am now a Senior Linux Administrator. I make good money for the location and was able to pay off all my student loans and put a down payment on a house when I was 32. In full disclosure this was speed up by about 5 years due to my mom passing and a life insurance policy I was the beneficiary on but it really only speed up the process by those 5 years. I already was doing pretty well before she passed.

I had some outstanding instructors and I refuse to do them an injustice by saying my education was sub-par or otherwise not worth the investment. Of all my friends who went to normal state universities I am doing the best for myself career wise. From what I heard from them at the time the state university standards where dropping just as much as the private for profit schools.

After earning my M.S. in Information Technology I went back and taught part time as an adjunct for both the electronics and information technology departments. I quit about 3 years ago when I moved about 1hr away and did not want to commute. This was just supplemental income for me and never my primary job so I was able to just do things my own way and not worry about the repercussions if I failed to may students or did not haul the corporate line. Things definitely where different by the time I went back to teach. The standards where not what they use to be when I was a student. They also added a lot of degree programs with attractive sounding names such as Digital Entertainment and Game Design which attracted a much broader student base and failed to provide any sort of meaningful filtering of who they accepted. However the faculty was still a outstanding group of people who knew their stuff.

I cant speak for other ITT Techs than my own. I'm sure for every person like me who had a positive experience there are numerous people who could tell a horror story about their experiences at ITT Tech. I just feel like a large part of the problem is that ITT accepts people who are not college material and these people are doomed to struggle or fail out and when they do they are also a demographic of individuals who are more likely to blame the system than accept any blame themselves. Perhaps it is ITT Techs fault for accepting them; its certainly doing the schools reputation a disservice. But just like with the student loans I have a hard time accepting people do not know what they are getting into or filling sorry for them if they did not do their research before hand.

I fully acknowledge ITT Tech has its fair share of problems which have gotten worse over the years. I just don't think its particularly unique to them or even for profit schools.

The original title is actually "This really might be the end of ITT" which I thought was clickbaity and didn't really explain the story.

That was definitely baity and you were right to change it (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

But we always prefer a title to use representative language from the article itself, where possible, so I've done that above.

On the other hand cutting off Title IV is basically the death penalty for a university ... So the original title might not be that far off from reality.

Clickbaity titles are "true" in the sense of being accurate. The issue with them is that they don't explain what the article is about (forcing you to click on them and then to figure out whether you are interested in the topic).

Maybe it's just me, but the original also sounds like someone with a bias against ITT would write

Reply on news.ycombinator.com