Most of you have probably caught an ad at some point for schools like University of Phoenix, Everest College or one of the numerous Corinthian Colleges around the country. These schools are known as “for-profit” colleges, meaning that unlike the various public and private universities around the U.S., they focus mainly on benefitting their shareholders rather than providing comprehensive educations for their students. Fusion has published a story in comic form showing the effects some of these colleges have had on students.
These schools promise an almost ‘too good to be true’ deal: Low admission fees, financial assistance, highly useful degrees and shorter schooling durations. These schools are big magnets for low-income students, minority students, foster care kids and single mothers, who wouldn’t normally be able to afford an education at a nonprofit college.
Yet the disturbing truth is that these colleges rarely make good on their promises, leaving behind graduates with utterly worthless degrees, a mountain of loan debt and completely ruined futures. In May of this year, one of the largest for-profit college companies, Corinthian Colleges, was investigated on the federal level and officially filed for bankruptcy. This motion let Corinthian off the hook for all the debt it had accrued…but its students were still stuck footing the enormous bill.
Fusion’s comics depict the real life stories of some of these defrauded students—honest people who truly believed they would be receiving worthwhile training. Instead they were ultimately betrayed by the very institutions that had promised them better lives. As said in the cartoon, “These colleges have been defined by fast growth and big profits – all subsidized by federal student assistance funding.” These students fare much worse than their non-profit counterparts: Twice as many drop out, five times as many default and the ones who do graduate do so with on average over $10,000 more in student loan debt.
After much protest and unionization by these former students, and tireless work by “debt strikers” who not only demand justice for their personal plights but an overall upheaval of a broken machine, the government has finally started to take notice. Frauduent debts are starting to be forgiven, and the Department of Education unveiled a plan for debt relief.
But most activists say that its not even close to being enough. More has to be done and on a larger scale, before this issue can be qualified as resolved. Students are continuing to protest, strike, rally and most importantly educate the general public which, for the most part, knows very little about this.