DeVry Agrees to Pay $100M in Case Alleging Deceptive Ads
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Okay standard sleazy corporate thing: settle the lawsuit, but deny any wrongdoing..
> Under the settlement, DeVry agreed to pay more than $49 million to the FTC, which says it will distribute the money to students "harmed by DeVry's conduct."
> The chain also agreed to forgive more than $30 million in loans issued before September 2015, and $20 million in debt owed by former students.
> Going forward, DeVry has promised not to misrepresent job and income prospects of potential students, and not to count jobs that students found more than six months before graduation.
If there was no wrongdoing, why would they promise not to misrepresent prospects going forward? That means they were, up to this point, misrepresenting prospects. This promise is admitting exactly the wrongdoing they explicitly said they are not admitting to.
Just say "Yes, we were merely counting whether our graduates had jobs or not, instead of more specifically if they were able to obtain employment as a direct result of their studies. Sorry. We will now collect and be more exact about this information."
Note: IANAL. Just a rational human being.
Federal Rules of Evidence Rule 407 (subsequent remedial measures) may be applicable here. For example, say you were at MartWal and slip and fall, then sue. They Answer the lawsuit denying liability, but they immediately replace the floor with a new non-slip material. Rules of evidence does not allow you to introduce the subsequent remedial measure as evidence of liability on the under lying claim. Why? Mostly it is entirely possible in my hypothetical MartWal was not negligent, but we wouldn't want a chilling effect on improvements during the case, just so the improvement isn't used as evidence of liability.
But more importantly to your point, its a settlement. You can basically include any provision you want, even if inconsistent, for example, I maintain no wrong doing but agree to issue a formal written apology. Why apologize if you maintain you did nothing wrong? Because its cheaper for everyone, and usually a better outcome for everyone (one side denies wrong doing the other still gets an apology), at least usually better than dragging it out and gambling the outcome on principle of a finding liability.
To be fair, pretty much every school does this, hell even my lawschool did this. The reality that higher education is selling a dream of cushy, high paying jobs, and that dream is a lie. If education institutions told the truth and provided un-manipulated statistics, they probably wouldn't be getting enrollment.
Firstly, perhaps having a degree lets them get a job - even outside of history. It can be a plus in any corporate job, regardless of whether it's related in any way to history. Among other things it creates cultural fit, makes interesting colleagues. This has direct positive effects all over. It also shows people's ability to work through a complex and long degree program.
There is another thing though: the fact is that this can be kind of a "white lie" that they needed to go do a degree in history. Perhaps they didn't - perhaps they could have started their corporate career 4 years earlier with no bad ramifications.
Still, they wanted and enjoyed that time and expanded as a person. It can be in people's interests to keep up the white lie that it was 'necessary'. And not just a splurge. Not just, "yeah I did it as a lifestyle thing."
So for all of these reasons and more, it is far from cut and dried. It's not as simple as people in this thread are saying.
Where's the reward for those who managed to make 'sound' choices despite the playing field being crazy? Even DeVry gets to write down 'bad debt' (though they'd probably sell it off as junk to debt collection agencies).
Here is a drop in the ocean. How many cases then FTC didn't detect the stuff?
Here it must have been really gross / blatant.