A local for-profit college allegedly misled students by using deceptive marketing tactics and promoting high-cost subprime student loans, the state Office of the Attorney General announced this week.
Attorney General Martha Coakley said her office sued Corinthian Colleges, Inc. and Corinthian Schools, Inc, which run Everest Institute in Brighton and Chelsea and enroll some 500 students. The attorney general’s office claims that the college reported job placement rates of 70 to 99 percent, while the actual rates for some programs were between 20 and 30 percent.
“We allege that this for-profit school aggressively recruited and misled students by falsely promising high quality, successful training programs, and instead left them with exorbitant student loan debt and without proper training or a well-paying career,” Attorney General Martha Coakley said in a written statement.
According to the complaint, Everest Institute in Brighton included students who temporarily worked for the school in the institution's post-graduation employment statistics.
The school allegedly participated in a two-day health fair and paid 25 students to assist at the fair. Those students were subsequently considered employed in the school’s post-graduation employment reports, the state claims. The school maintains that its reported numbers are accurate and that the controversy surrounds the standards used by the state to classify employment.
“Today’s action by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office disregards substantial, independent evidence that our two schools in Massachusetts have a strong record of offering students a quality education and treating them honestly and fairly,” a spokesperson for the school said in a written statement.
