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Examining U of Phoenix recruitment
University of Phoenix
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Jewel Calderon, 21.
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: President Obama turned to education today. He dangled $5 billion in grant money in front of states that are willing to line up their priorities with his. That's K-through-12 education, of course. Yesterday we were talking about higher education. For-profit higher ed, specifically. The biggest for- profit university in the country -- the University of Phoenix -- is fighting a lawsuit. The suit says the school cheated taxpayers out of billions of dollars. Money that came from federal student loans. It's just the latest in a series of claims that for-profit schools use deceptive tactics to sign people up. Our story reported by Marketplace's Amy Scott and Sharona Coutts of ProPublica continues now. Here's Amy.
AMY SCOTT: It might start with a click on a banner ad. Or maybe an online competition to win an iPod. You fill out some personal information. And then the calls start.
KATHERINE CLARK: They were very persistent.
TERESA BARRON: She called me every day.
DANIEL RAY: I legitimately got three or four calls a day for about two weeks until I finally talked to him.
Katherine Clark, Teresa Barron, and Daniel Ray are just three of the many students around the country who tell a similar story. They've been hounded by enrollment counselors from for-profit colleges. Anyone familiar with the sales profession will recognize some of their hard-sell tactics.
But ProPublica and Marketplace have uncovered several instances where recruiters crossed the line. One tactic: win the target's trust.
CLARK: We would e-mail constantly throughout the day, text message, talk on the phone.
Kat Clark was a student at the University of Phoenix in Long Beach, Calif.
At first, she had a great relationship with her enrollment counselor.
CLARK: We had barbecues and stuff together.
Scott: Did you feel that the friendship was genuine?
CLARK: Yeah, I don't really think it was like a genuine thing, I think it was more of a, this is my job and I'll do anything to make sure that I get paid.
Enrollment counselors do get paid based at least in part on how many students they sign up. And how long those students keep coming to class. That's legal, as long as pay isn't solely based on recruitment. The company says frequent contact with students is about supporting them.
Bill Pepicello is the university's president.
BILL PEPICELLO: Certainly we want the students to believe that we are acting in their best interests, but it's certainly not by developing personal relationships.
But another student told us a University of Phoenix counselor buttered up her grandmother.
Jewel Calderon lived in Fayetteville, N.C. She says the counselor told her he and grandma had what he called "church" over phone.
JEWEL CALDERON: He said he prayed with her over the phone, and he told her his mother was sick, and that they prayed about that. And he gained her trust, which made me gain his trust, and that's why I decided on that college as opposed to others.
Calderon ended up taking out close to $12,000 in government loans. When she and other students started having problems with the school, the
friendships they'd developed with counselors evaporate.
Brandon Burke lives in Portland, Ore.
Until last December, he worked as an enrollment counselor at the University of Phoenix. He says managers taught him and his colleagues a number of strategies to trick students into signing up. One ploy was to create a "sense of urgency."
BRANDON BURKE: One thing we would be told to do is call up a student who was on the fence and say, all right, I've only got one seat left. I need to know right now if you need me to save this for you. Well, that wasn't true.
In the training session, Burke says staff asked the manager what to do if that student showed up for class, and there were only six or seven people there.
BURKE: And the manager said, well you tell them that the class got so full that we had to split it.
Scott: So you were basically told to lie?
Burke: Yeah. We were told to lie.
Burke wasn't the only counselor we spoke to who says managers told them to lie. And we've learned Phoenix isn't the only for-profit school that's used these tactics. Brandon Burke says managers encouraged him to bend the truth in other ways, too.
BURKE: People would say you know I saw the CSI, and I want to do that.
CSI: I got three GSWs. One to the left kidney area, one to the left thigh.
Burke says he got frequent calls from fans of the popular TV show. He says supervisors told him to steer them to the criminal justice program. That might qualify them to work as prison guards. But not as forensic criminologists. But one of the biggest complaints students had was that counselors misled them about credits.
BURKE: One of the things that we were told to do was, you say we are regionally accredited, which means they're transferable anywhere, which isn't true. They're eligible for transferability.
In fact, it's up to each school to decide whose credits they accept. And in many cases, University of Phoenix credits don't transfer. Burke says he never misled students. He left the company in disgust. Two former counselors from another campus sued the university, claiming they were pressured to sign students up.
Last week, the company announced it expects to cough up more than $80 million to settle that case. But the University says it doesn't train its counselors to lie or to mislead students.
Harris Miller is CEO of the Career College Association, an industry lobby group. He chalks any wrongdoing up to a few rogue employees.
HARRIS MILLER: If these accusations are correct than the appropriate authorities should investigate them. And if it's true, then my response is hang 'em high.
Miller says higher education is a heavily regulated industry with oversight by federal and state authorities, as well as private accreditors.
MILLER: The fact of the matter is we're educating over two million students. And focusing on a few wild allegations, and a few documented instances of violations of the law, is not the way to describe the career college sector.
But the sector has been in trouble before. In the early 90s, the government cracked down on hundreds of for-profit trade schools for abusing student-aid programs.
Barmak Nassirian represents college admissions officers. He sees many of the same abuses today.
BARMAK NASSIRIAN: The M.O. has not changed over the years. We have one step at a time over the course of the past 15 years removed all of the provisions that together momentarily cleaned the system up.
Congress and the Department of Education are looking at the rules again. The Obama administration wants more people to go to college. Congress poured more than $15 billion in stimulus money into college grants. Advocates welcome the investment in higher ed. But they also want change.
They say without it, the system will continue to benefit for-profit companies more than the students they're supposed to help.
With Sharona Coutts of ProPublica, I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace.
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Some these things are blatant lies. I have never been asked to sign up for extra classes. In fact, I have been advised on how to test out of as many classes as possible to save me thousands. Professors at UOP are great, way better than the professors that have been career students and are so caught up in selling their own book, they forget that they were once were the students are. The real world insight these professors have make these classes worth every penny. The curriculum is challenging and rewarding and as someone who has been in community college and full blown universities, this has been by far the best experience I have had.
The University of Phoenix functions under a culture or fear and intimidation. Students are intimidated into signing up of extra classes which are not related to their specialization whereas staff if intmidated into trying to sign up prospective students by hook or by crook. The faculty is not spared either and professional teachers who try to give the student�s their money�s worth in education are often sidelined and insted preference is given to those who indulge in brown nosing the administration, even if these teachers may not be good teachers and get poor reviews from the students. This is not the opinion of one but many teachers who give up valuable time from their high paying professions, to help adult students in their quest for higher education, even at low monetary teaching compensations.
Unfortunately, there are dishonest people at every single workplace. Those who use misleading tactics to get ahead should be disciplined or fired. However, I can ensure you this is not the standard practice at the University of Phoenix.
Additionally, why are there no reports being done on colleges that are not accredited? How unfortunate that there are so many students being mislead by unaccredited colleges, thinking they are getting a valid education, only to find out that their credits are basically worthless when they are looking to transfer to another college or apply for jobs. ProPublica, tell the whole story.
I've heard comments on both sides of this issue. I am one of those who had a generally good experience with UoP, and for the most part I would say that my classmates had and equally beneficial experiences. This is a profit driven enterprise, so we should not be surprised to learn that the University's objectives are to enroll as many students as possible. I won't say that my experience with the school was flawless, and I saw a few red flags here and there while enrolled, but for the most part the academic content offered and the work that I put forth to earn my degree were relevant to my management position with the Fortune 100 company that helped me pay for it through tuition reimbursement. I did not hear any interviews with any of the thousands of students like me who understood from day one how the school works and what was expected of all parties involved in our education.
This leaves me somewhat skeptical of the validity of this report.
My MSC/School Counseling came from UOP in the Denver area, and I have nothing good to say about them--except that I got a good education. Unfortunately, with their reputation, outside of Denver area schools, employers are not taking my degree seriously.
To Katherine Hamilton: I think it is equally "terrifying" how someone with no apparent experience in a matter can make judgments on that matter based on a biased story. Why are you terrified to hear both sides of a story? Are you terrified of getting to the truth?
The main issue of the story was about students saddled with student loans and some pressure sales techniques. If there are problems with the recruitment and financial programs, they need to be dealt with, and my understanding is that they are. The government is involved and there are civil lawsuits that will sort all that out.
The story by Marketplace only referred to a few disgruntled students and a few disaffected employees. Go back and read it if you find more than that. I also saw a couple of other people, not from UOP, make generic comments.
If you want the whole story, the real story, talk to the quarter of a million UOP students, the entire business staff, and the 20,000 faculty, not just a few from each category. I guarantee you will hear some horror stories. You will hear a lot more success stories from students, staff who enjoy what they do and who spend a lot of time and energy helping students and supporting the institution, and faculty who love seeing people learn.
You're already spending a lot of money on publicly-funded universities in your state and all the others. They can't handle more students, and don't want to, even if they had more money. They are selective in who they 'allow' to take advantage of that taxpayer money. At UOP, anyone can try, and personal accountability for the cost of trying rests clearly with the students. "They made me do it" is a pathetic excuse. If they lied to you, file a lawsuit; that seems to be the method of avoiding personal accountability for many things today. But don't blame anyone else because you didn't know what you were signing.
University of Phoenix is a school just like any other, except it doesn't rely on taxpayers funding the entire school. Students fund the school through their tuition, and they are responsible for managing that in the best way for them. If there are employees doing something wrong, they need to be held accountable, too. But you don't banish for-profit schools to create a monopoly on education for the privileged few just because a few staff did something wrong or a few students didn't succeed or didn't like their experiences.
I have nothing to do with University of Phoenix's financial operations, recruitment, or anything other than teaching in the classroom and my experiences as a student. I had a few Academic Counselors and two Financial Counselors in addition to my recruiter when I started the program. Every one of them did everything they could to explain the processes, the timelines, and anything I needed to succeed. They supported me even after they'd gotten my tuition money, all the way to the end of my program. then they met me at graduation and told me how proud they were of me.
This story was not news, it was a story. It wasn't journalism and it didn't describe the practices or experiences hundreds of thousands of students, staff, and faculty who are proud to work for UOP. I Am A Phoenix!
Unfortunately, UofP is not the only school that practices these tactics. Interactive Learning Systems does the same. I have been an Admissions representative at this school for about a month and the pressure tactics are absurd! Pressuring low income students into applying for financial aid - and then financing the unfunded balance. I am turning in my resignation today.... My conscious will not allow me to work here any longer.
I was a past UOP employee and received my MBA from them as well. I worked for the university for nearly three years (virtually unheard of because of the high turnover rates). I was promoted to manger and made visits to UOP’s corporate offices in Phoenix, Arizona. As such, I have seen both sides of Apollo Groups’ business. This organization places an extreme amount of pressure on their employees’ to enroll students (what you are hearing is all-true). UOP uses a pay for performance review process known as the “Matrix.†Although it shows many measurements for reviewing an employees’ performance, the only two measurements that count are (1) the number of applications that are filled out (a complete application must include the student’s financing choices) and (2) the number of students that start classes. The university calls these measurements the “keep your job numbers.†Unfortunately, this organization is not entirely “above boardâ€. I have kept many of the emails that have coached advisors and managers alike to use unscrupulous tactics for enrolling students. When I read the replies to this news story that defend UOP, a part of me wonders if these replies may not be “planted responses†from the school. They have a history of doing these types of things. A year or two ago, the university under went a campaign to clean up its image by purchasing the infamous site www.uopsucks.com. and shutting it down. Shortly afterwards, they purchased most of the “UOP†real estate on YouTube. A year or so ago, a person could perform a UOP search on YouTube and find countless disgruntled employees and students. Nowadays, the first 50 or more hits are nothing but UOP ads. When I read the comments in defense of UOP, I understand the student’s desire to stand up for their alma mater. The last thing a person wants to do is trash the degree they just spent tens of thousands of dollars receiving. As a fellow alumnus, I would rather not discuss the quality of a UOP degree. However, I will share a quick anecdote. A fellow student once came to me before class and asked me if I thought the skills being taught were worth the money. I had no answer, as I try not to lie. In closing I will say that the commentary shared by past enrollment counselors from UOP is true based on my experiences, and (like many of my peers), I have kept the emails to prove it.
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