Exclusive Part 2: Ex-Career College Chief Explains Why So Many For-Profit College Employees Become Whistleblowers

[Editor’s Note: Today, at Higher Ed Watch, we are running the second in a series of three guest posts from Neal Raisman, who served as the chancellor of the Career Education Corporation’s Briarcliffe College from 2001 to 2005. In this post, he talks about the intense pressure that for-profit college recruiters are put under to “meet their numbers” at any cost and earn their bonuses. This is a point that this blog has been making since its inception, but that the industry’s most fervent supporters continue to refuse to acknowledge (see the first comment that’s posted on last week’s post). At Higher Ed Watch, we believe that it is a point that especially needs to be reiterated this week as the sector’s friends in Congress seek to derail the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts to regulate these schools.]

By Neil Raisman

Career colleges in general do not pay the field hands, the ones working at the schools all that well. The people who run, teach in, and manage the schools where the revenue is generated are paid less and having much greater pressure and level of demands to deal with. This makes the bonuses they receive all the more necessary and important to them. The corporate “seagulls” are paid better, fly into a school, do what seagulls do, and fly off leaving the field hands to clean up the mess.

For some reason, the “seagulls” seem to have a belief that if they can bully people, the field hands will respond and do better — even if the people at the school know the goals being set cannot be met, or the new program will not succeed in the school’s area, or the demanded reductions in staff will only reduce the ability to perform and meet the goals set. This all creates anxiety, anger and antagonism that builds until field staff explode all over the pages of the local newspapers, TV and yes, in legislative hearings. [I should mention that this does not apply to everyone of course. There are some intelligent regional managers or area directors. In fact, there are some who should be used as role models for others.]

Many schools do not realize that their employees are their customers too. They need positive attention and good customer service. But since too many of the companies in the sector see employees as a cost and easily replaced, these employees do not get the service and respect they deserve. Some schools and companies may try to keep the faculty happy and show some recognition with things like “Faculty Member of the Year” awards, but staff…not so much. In fact, staff members are seen as being expendable too often and are thus pushed to do and achieve without appropriate reward and recognition.

This is especially true of one group of staff members that have become stalwart contributors to all the media and hearings – ex-admissions counselors. I had the unfortunate experience of hearing a corporate executive yelling at all the admissions people at a school. She was screaming at them during a conference call, telling them they are a disgrace, failures, do-nothings, losers who should all be fired and likely will be if they miss the “starts” goal. And that was the nice part of the discussion. I had the pleasure of kicking an admissions seagull off the campus and banning him from coming back because of the way he was working with the staff.

Admissions people are pushed to achieve unrealistic numbers. They are told “this is not something you should do but…” They are constantly threatened with dismissal, being written up and put on probation if they do not hit their application or phone calling and admission goals. Then to keep their jobs, they feel they have to get students any way they can. Meanwhile, their managers look the other way and just applaud reps who get applications even if they are “pity aps” completed because the rep begged the student to complete the application “so I can keep my job” — even though these applications fail to lead to actual shows. The school does not hit enrollment and the lowest achieving reps are let go. And they go with resentment and anger building within because they gave their all against a goal they knew was unrealistic. And many gave more than their all. They may have crossed ethical lines that haunt them. They could know they misled students to get the application. They may realize they compromised themselves and hurt students just to try and keep a job they really hated anyhow because of how they were treated. So given the opportunity to assuage some guilt, they open up to the media and legislators about what they were forced to do that they now know was wrong.

They tell all and more since they know and observed all. They were there when a misguided admission’s director told them how to get more applications. How it was all about “getting butts in the seats”. They know the rep who was rewarded for putting in false applications and others had to have known because no application fee came with the form. They are there when the rep who got students to apply by misrepresenting the actual offerings, cost or the student’s possibility of actually succeeding is rewarded and promoted, while they do the job as it should be done and just get harassed for not doing as well. They are there when the highest achieving rep gets a cash or material award or the highest achieving reps get a vacation at a Hawaiian hotel which will be called “a professional training meeting,” all of which is illegal under Title IV of the Higher Education Act. And when they are let go, as they inevitably will be — and are given fifteen minutes to clear out and are walked off campus by security — they become low hanging fruit for those who wish to pit the sector in a negative light.

[Next week, we will run the third and final part of this series, in which the author calls for dramatic changes in the way the for-profit college sector operates.]

Neal Raisman is a leading consultant and solution provider for academic customer service, administrative leadership and retention solutions. He has assisted over 400 schools, colleges and universities in the US, Canada and Europe. From 2001 to 2005, he served as chancellor of the Career Education Corporation’s Briarcliffe College. Previous to that, he served as president at two community colleges, and as the associate provost at the University of Cincinnati. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New America Foundation. Portions of this essay have also run on Career College Central.