Top Rank Schools

The last time the federal Government Accountability Office investigated for-profit colleges, its report was scathing. Admissions officers at all 15 schools made misleading claims or used high-pressure sales tactics to undercover officers and four committed fraud, according to the July 2010 report.

The GAO has released its latest probe and this time the results are more mixed.

In this year’s investigation, undercover agents posed as students who use fake high school credentials, cheat on assignments or never show up for class.

Twelve out of 15 colleges accepted students with fake high school credentials, the report stated. Of those 12, five followed proper procedures on issues such as cheating, exit counseling and grading standards, with the other seven having mixed results.

But the identities of these schools were a mystery Tuesday afternoon. The report only identifies them as College 1, College 2, etc. A spokesman for the GAO declined to identify them, and officials from the office of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who requested the investigation, couldn’t be reached Tuesday.

I called Kaplan University, which runs an online program based out of Fort Lauderdale. Spokesman Ron Iori said Kaplan is College 3 in the report and got a “clean bill of health.”

But other schools allowed the undercover agents to remain enrolled and received passing grades even if they turned in plagiarized work or failed to turn in assignments, the report states.

“While I am pleased to see that many individual instructors offered assistance to GAO undercover students turning in substandard work, the fact that many of the schools accepted incomplete and plagiarized work – sometimes for full credit – leads me to question whether for-profit college students are truly receiving the quality education they are promised to prepare them for a good job,” Harkin said.

But the report was met with skepticism from Brian Moran, interim CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, an industry trade group. He noted that the GAO made a number of revisions to its report last year, following complaints from schools. The GAO said the changes didn’t have any substantial impact on the findings.

“Unfortunately, Senator Harkin has chosen to target just one sector of higher education, while similar questions could and should be raised about the non-profit sector,” Moran said.
I’ll keep you updated as I learn who some of these schools are.

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