“I feel like I was set up to fail”: Inside a for-profit college nightmare

Students like how for-profit schools offer courses that are taught for several hours one night a week in a location near work. That kind of schedule is much easier, if you have a job or a family, than it would be to drive over to a community college campus during a break from work several times every week. As with community colleges, their curricula focus on job skills.

Jaqueta tried a semester at community college. She went to Durham Technical Community College during the 2011-12 school year.

“It did not go well,” she says. “I was taking early childhood education. I did not have transportation. The class was constantly being canceled and I could not make up any of the work. I decided to leave there.”

A spokesperson from Corinthian felt that these stories reflect on the ability of for-profit schools to compete against community colleges.

“We find consistently that a third of our students tried community college and left before they come to us,” says Jenkins, the spokesman from Everest’s legislative and regulatory office. “Our schools tend to enroll more that are at risk of not graduating. They are the first in their family to attend college, or they are low-income or they are Hispanic. What our critics conveniently overlook is that year after year, our schools have higher graduation and completion rates than do community colleges.”

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