DoED settlement: For-profit school must scale back student success claims
Advertisements for DeVry, a for-profit university, claimed that since 1975, 90 percent of graduates find a job within six months of graduation. The government says that those claims are unsubstantiated.
The US Department of Education announced a settlement Thursday with DeVry University, a for-profit institution of higher education, over the school’s use of post-graduation employment claims in advertisements to lure new students.
DeVry got in trouble with regulators for widely advertising that since 1975, 90 percent of graduates had found a job in their field within six months of graduating. The school was unable to substantiate that claim, the Department of Education concluded, based on materials it requested from DeVry in August 2015.
“This is yet again another major instance of a for-profit institution running into difficulties with the new regulatory scrutiny,” Kevin Kinser, the head of the department of education policy at Pennsylvania State University, tells The Christian Science Monitor.
“Students deserve accurate information about where to invest their time and money, and the law is simple and clear: recruitment claims must be backed up by hard data,” US Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr. said in a statement.
Both the Department of Education and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are working to investigate DeVry. As a result of this week’s settlement, DeVry will be required to post a more than $68 million letter of credit, cease advertising with its "90 percent" statistics, and prominently state on its website that the previous claims were unsubstantiated.
Although it is the latest school to run afoul of federal regulators, DeVry is not alone. In recent years, a number of for-profit chains have come under scrutiny, as evidence grows that attending such institutions often leaves students in debt and poor employment outcomes, a cycle that worsens the ongoing student loan crisis in the United States.
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