Coming Soon: Plaza Culinary Diploma Mill
Old office space for Highwoods on The Plaza will now host this operation . . . "Vatterott College’s L’École Culinaire will offer a culinary arts program to prepare the students for entry-level positions in the industry. The students also will operate a restaurant, The Presentation Room, for on-the-job training."
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I know that when I think of Cordon Bleu fine cuisine... I think of Vatterott.
The same Vatteroot College that the press barely mentioned when a number of their leaders were convicted for stealing Federal funds by bogusing up student qualification paperwork? The same Vatterott college the got nailed for hundreds of thousands in dollars for cheating their employees on payroll and overtime in St. Joseph? Oh yeah! They are cookin' alright!
Romney Has Some Great Friends Who Are For-Profit College Owners
The New York Times reported in January that Romney praised for-profit colleges, in particular overpriced Full Sail University without telling voters that his campaign and Super PAC had received nearly $100,000 from Full Sail CEO Bill Heavener and from C. Kevin Landry, chairman of TA Associates, the private equity firm that owns Full Sail.
But TA has other connections to Romney and the for-profit college industry.
As Republic Report’s Lee Fang has reported, Romney invested $10 million in Solamere Capital, a “fund of fund” investment company that invests clients’ money in elite private equity firms. Romney has received between $100,000 and $1 million in returns from that stake. Romney was, in fact, the first investor in Solamere, not surprising if you know that a founder and managing partner of Solamere is Mitt’s Romney’s son Tagg; another is Spencer Zwick, the chief fundraiser for Romney’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. And one of the private equity firms offered to Solamere clients was TA Associates. TA owns a number of for-profit colleges, including The Rocky Mountain School of Design in Colorado and the Los Angeles Film School in California.
In 2009, TA Associates acquired for-profit Vatterott Colleges.
88.1% of Vatterott's total 2010 revenue was comprised of federal education funds.
More info about Vatterott.
Harkin Calls on For-Profit Colleges to End Deceptive Recruiting Practices
Tuesday, February 08, 2011
WASHINGTON – Late yesterday, Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate to discuss his ongoing investigation into the for-profit education sector and the cynical and misleading tactics used to enroll students in for-profit schools. Citing documents produced to the HELP Committee, Harkin detailed the systemic focus on exploiting emotional vulnerabilities to convince students to enroll, to prey on their “pain” and sign them up at any cost. Harkin also noted the consequences of these tactics: new data from the Department of Education showing one in every four students that enroll at a for-profit school default on their loans within three years of leaving, with for-profit students account for almost half of all loan defaults.
“When students are enrolled through deception or fear, they are less prepared to meet the challenges of college,” Harkin said. “Rather than offering students a better life, these types of strong-arm, emotionally abusive tactics are all too typical of schools that have little or no interest in providing students the academic help and support they need to succeed. When these types of deceptive and exploitative tactics are used to enroll students, we should not be surprised to see high drop out and high default rates as a result.”
Last September, Harkin released a report that showed drop-out rates of 60 and 70 percent at the larger for-profit schools, while $24 billion taxpayer dollars went straight from federal student loan programs to the schools’ Wall Street owners and private shareholders, accounting for 87% of their total revenue. To date, Harkin has chaired three hearings on for-profit schools. For more information about the findings of his investigation, visit his website: http://harkin.senate.gov/forprofitcolleges.cfm
No wonder Missouri loves Vatterott College! Sounds like the organization has it's own corporate welfare and bail out program all wrapped in a pretty package.
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