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Comment by willcipriano | Hacker News Reader

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Any you’d like to highlight that come anywhere close to “we picked a sample size of one student” or “no finance charge means $4k finance charge”?

Colleges do tend to be a bit more careful, but they often publish hiring numbers based on graduates rather than students, when advertising. This is deceptive, because they never mention their completion rates (which are often around 50%), and significantly impacts the calculus.

The completion rates are listed online and have a standardized definition from the government.

Do they tell students they may be saddled with debt for 30 years and that the cost of tuition is much larger than the incomes they get from their majors?

More than these folks did, for sure.

> BloomTech falsely claimed its “income share” agreements were not loans, did not create debt, did not carry a finance charge, and were “risk free.” In fact, the agreements are loans with an average finance charge of $4,000. The loans carry substantial risk, as a single missed payment triggers a default and the remainder of the $30,000 “cap” becomes due immediately. BloomTech further hid the cost and nature of the “income share” loans by not disclosing key terms like the finance charge and annual percentage rate, as required by law.

Student loans from a legitimate lender don't come with balloon payments, the APRs and any finance charges are clearly disclosed, etc., and they're not making up graduation rates.

Federal loans are not dischargeable, which are way way worse than this.

"Have a bright future as a (job)"

"(job) can earn (x) dollars a year!"

When in reality that career is losing jobs and less than 10% of graduates get one. Anything what would have you work in a museum would probably meet this criteria.

Alternative is they told the truth, everyone went in with eyes wide open and everyone is responsible for their own student loans.

Those claims come nowhere close to the outright fraud laid out in the CFPB complaint.

Colleges generally make nebulous claims about producing well-rounded students I think. Seems hard to find anything specific enough to be actionable.

Recently a number of actions by FTC and CFPB have been taken due to false claims of job placement or success, especially when tied to financing options. If a college makes a claim like this that is patently false it’s worth sending to them.

In my experience, colleges (at least those that are not-for-profit) don’t actively try to convince you to attend their campus. The expectation or pressure to attend generally comes from their family, friends, and school community.

If a reputable college really wants a student to attend, their financial aid office will generally find a way to lower your costs. Or else they will deny your application, or at best load you up with ugly Parent PLUS loans.

My youngest brother is a high school senior who was recently admitted to an Ivy around three weeks ago. Since then, he has gotten a decent amount of physical and electronic mail on why he should attend. I think highly ranked schools have an incentive to convince admitted students to attend to keep their yield rate high, which factors into their ranking.

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