$30-Million Fine For Corinthian May Portend Tougher Scrutiny Of For-Profits

“The U.S. Department of Education has fined Corinthian Colleges $29.6 million for ‘misrepresentation of job-placement rates to current and prospective students in Corinthian’s Heald College system,’ the department said in a news release on Tuesday. The department also said it was cutting off Title IV federal student aid to two Heald campuses,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports.

“‘This should be a wake-up call for consumers across the country about the abuses that can exist within the for-profit college sector,’ the secretary of education, Arne Duncan, said in the release. ‘We will continue to hold the career-college industry accountable and demand reform for the good of students and taxpayers.’ Corinthian said that the allegations were based on flawed analysis and that it planned ‘to contest everything.’

The department’s readiness to impose the fine — one of its largest ever — over allegations of falsified job-placement rates may also be a sign that it is devoting renewed attention to such reporting by for-profit colleges, and could have implications that extend far beyond Corinthian.”