FOR PROFIT COLLEGES RIPOFF: 12 States taking on For Profit Colleges

http://www.alternet.org/education/attorneys-general-come-down-accreditor-profit-colleges?akid=14180.294211.BKQjKW&rd=1&src=newsletter1054893&t=28

The letter cited reporting from ProPublica that found that students at schools accredited by ACICS were worse off than students at other schools. At a typical ACICS-accredited college, only 35 percent of students graduate, the lowest rate of any accreditor. The national graduation rate is around 59 percent.

“Even in the crowded field of accrediting failures, ACICS deserves special opprobrium,” the attorneys general wrote in a letter released on Friday, saying that the actions of the accreditor had “ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable students whom it was charged to protect.”

The letter comes in advance of a Department of Education review of the accreditor, scheduled for June.

Asked about the letter, ACICS released a statement saying they had not received it. They added that ACICS “looks forward to reviewing all public comments and defending its merits” before the review.

ProPublica’s analysis also found that even after leaving college, students at ACICS-accredited schools face greater struggles in paying off their loans. Within three years of leaving school, one out of five students defaulted on their loans. About 60 percent of students could not even pay down one dollar of their loan principal.

Accreditors are nonprofit agencies that are supposed to ensure college quality. To qualify for the government’s student aid programs, colleges are required to get an accreditor’s stamp of approval. For the many for-profit schools that rely on federal loans for revenue, losing accreditation would a deathblow.

But the agencies rarely revoke a school’s accreditation, even when a college is facing serious allegations. ACICS, for example, allowed Corinthian Colleges to keep its accreditation until the day the college chain declared bankruptcy. Under ACICS’ watch, the school received $3.5 billion in federal aid, despite investigations from more than twenty state attorneys general, the Department of Education’s inspector general, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.