FTC Joins the Fight Against Private Sector Schools

The FTC joined forces this week with the Obama administration’s fight against private sector colleges. The agency released new guidelines this week in hopes to crack down on deceptive advertising, promotions, marketing and sales made by private sector colleges featuring vocational programs.

The new guidelines followed the tip sheet recently released by the FTC to help veterans better scrutinize private sector colleges, in hopes the same guidelines can help all students.

Seven of the eight comments received by the FTC submitted by numerous accrediting agencies were in favor of retaining the guidelines noting, “Many instances of fraud in the industry and urged that the guides be strengthened and enforced more vigorously.” APSCU however commented against retaining all guidelines, suggesting rather retain the guidelines only for unaccredited or unlicensed institutions stating that the guidelines were unnecessary, “and would create additional burdens for institutions that are licensed by a stat or accredited by a DOE recognized accrediting agency.”

Overall the Commission proposed four modifications to the guidelines including:

1. Guides addressing misrepresentations of salaries, job placement, completion rates and time frames.
2. Guides addressing misleading statements indicating that a program would render a student eligible to take a licensing exam.
3. Guides stating that misrepresenting a student’s admissions test score as a deceptive practice, hindering their success to complete the program.
4. Guides to address transfer of credits, assistance to language barriers, source of funding for student loans and crime statistics.

The FTC’s new guidelines went effective November 18^th 2013. Contact IntegriShield today and make sure your institution is in compliance with the new guidelines.