SAVANNAH, Ga. — As a guarantor of student loans that specialized in collecting from students on the precipice of bankruptcy, the Educational Credit Management Corporation saw up close the “impact of students taking on debt, dropping out of school and being no better off than when they started college in terms of being able to find well-paying jobs,” according to David Hawn, the nonprofit guaranty agency’s chief executive officer.
So after initially “laughing and saying ‘no way’ ” when ECMC was first approached last year about buying parts of the failing Corinthian Colleges chain, Hawn perceived an opportunity......In a speech here this week to the National Council for Higher Education Resources, which represents lenders, guaranty agencies and other organizations that support student loan and grant programs, Hawn sought to explain ECMC’s reasons for buying the Corinthian campuses, its early plans for turning the failing campuses into going concerns, and “why I’m not as crazy as you might think” to create the nation’s largest nonprofit career college provider.......Hawn may be unlikely to win over the more vehement of the deal’s critics, but his genial manner is disarming and some of the comments in his talk here this week suggest a radical shift in how the campuses have historically operated.
“The old way cannot be acceptable,” Hawn said. Read it here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/corinthian-college-campuses-becoming-countrys-largest-nonprofit-career-school-network/