[Phys-L] ITT Educational Services (ITT Tech) closed all 130 campuses

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

This may be tangentially off-topic, but it is going to have reverberations
throughout the educational system, directly and indirectly.  Also, it seems
likely that there are other shoes waiting to drop.

 "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money."
			-- Everett Dirksen

Quoting from http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-itt-tech-20160906-snap-story.html

> ITT Educational Services Inc. said that the shutdown will affect 
> “tens of thousands” of students who were preparing for the start of 
> classes this month and cost more than 8,000 employees their jobs.

> The company has operated vocational schools on more than 130
> campuses in 38 states, often under the ITT Technical Institute name.
> Last year, it enrolled 45,000 students and reported $850 million in 
> revenue.
>
> But like many other for-profit college operators, ITT has faced 
> federal and state investigations of is recruiting and accounting 
> practices.

They can trace their history back 70 years, to 1946.  My longstanding
opinion is that many of their advertising claims were overoptimistic,
to say the least.

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This was unsurprising, if you were paying attention last month:

Quoting from https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/08/25/breaking-education-department-slaps-serious-sanctions-itt

> > The new federal sanctions include moving ITT to a tighter form of 
> > financial oversight, dubbed heightened cash monitoring; a freeze
> > on new students receiving federal aid; an increase in the amount of
> > a required letter of credit to $247 million; and limits on the 
> > compensation of the for-profit’s executives.

> > [...] could push the large for-profit chain toward bankruptcy and
> > closure. ITT is facing a wide range of federal and state legal
> > challenges, in addition to scrutiny by its national accreditor,
> > which believes the for-profit chain is unlikely to come into
> > compliance with its requirements. Department officials said the
> > “sweeping” sanctions were necessary to protect students and
> > taxpayer dollars.

----

That too was unsurprising, based on how things looked two years ago:

Quoting from http://time.com/money/3426618/student-loan-default-factories/

> Almost 650,000 federal student loan borrowers have defaulted on 
> their debt, new data shows. A handful of for-profit schools are a 
> big part of the problem.

ITT Tech came in second on the list of bad actors.

University of Phoenix was #1.