
DeVry Agrees to Pay $100M in Case Alleging Deceptive Ads - gooseyard
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/12/15/us/ap-us-devry-settlement.html
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gregmac
> In a statement issued Thursday [..] officials for Devry [..] denied all
> wrongdoing but said they are "pleased this matter is reaching resolution."

Okay standard sleazy corporate thing: settle the lawsuit, but deny any
wrongdoing..

> Under the settlement, DeVry agreed to pay more than $49 million to the FTC,
> which says it will distribute the money to students "harmed by DeVry's
> conduct."

> The chain also agreed to forgive more than $30 million in loans issued
> before September 2015, and $20 million in debt owed by former students.

> Going forward, DeVry has promised not to misrepresent job and income
> prospects of potential students, and not to count jobs that students found
> more than six months before graduation.

If there was no wrongdoing, why would they promise not to misrepresent
prospects going forward? That means they were, up to this point,
misrepresenting prospects. This promise is admitting exactly the wrongdoing
they explicitly said they are not admitting to.

Just say "Yes, we were merely counting whether our graduates had jobs or not,
instead of more specifically if they were able to obtain employment as a
direct result of their studies. Sorry. We will now collect and be more exact
about this information."

Note: IANAL. Just a rational human being.

~~~
vivekd
>Yes, we were merely counting whether our graduates had jobs or not, instead
of more specifically if they were able to obtain employment as a direct result
of their studies.

To be fair, pretty much every school does this, hell even my lawschool did
this. The reality that higher education is selling a dream of cushy, high
paying jobs, and that dream is a lie. If education institutions told the truth
and provided un-manipulated statistics, they probably wouldn't be getting
enrollment.

~~~
logicallee
it's not so cut and dried. For one thing, suppose that someone really wanted
to study history and loved their university studies, it was the best years of
their life.

Firstly, perhaps having a degree lets them get a job - even outside of
history. It can be a plus in any corporate job, regardless of whether it's
related in any way to history. Among other things it creates cultural fit,
makes interesting colleagues. This has direct positive effects all over. It
also shows people's ability to work through a complex and long degree program.

There is another thing though: the fact is that this can be kind of a "white
lie" that they needed to go do a degree in history. Perhaps they didn't -
perhaps they could have started their corporate career 4 years earlier with no
bad ramifications.

Still, they wanted and enjoyed that time and expanded as a person. It can be
in people's interests to keep up the white lie that it was 'necessary'. And
not just a splurge. Not just, "yeah I did it as a lifestyle thing."

So for all of these reasons and more, it is far from cut and dried. It's not
as simple as people in this thread are saying.

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stefek99
I always assumed advertising is misleading, massaging data and presenting it
in favorable light.

Here is a drop in the ocean. How many cases then FTC didn't detect the stuff?

Here it must have been really gross / blatant.

~~~
cm2012
The outcome of this advertising is why the hammer came down. Thousands of
lower class students burdened with debt.

