READ this !!!! very good information!!! Something is going on with the transfer:
https://www.durbin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/durbin-brown-urge-devos-to-protect-students-and-taxpayers-in-potential-transfer-of-predatory-for-profit-devry-university-to-cogswell-education-
@TAhhF6a-2gtv ….maybe it's time somebody pointed out those responsible...tell Cogswell that if you want to be tarred by all this you need to clean house...
DeVry is a fraudulent, abusive, and corrupt company that systematically cheats its students and abuses its faculty and other employees. There is no academic integrity and the "education" that is provided is worthless. Having taught for the company for several years I experienced the abuse and management incompetence first hand. If the deal goes through the company will continue to engage in fraud, abuse, and corruption with no transparency. It will simply become a large scale snake oil sales operation dedicated to cheating employees and students while enriching managers.
"If the transaction is finalized, it will fall to Cogswell Education to correct the widespread misconduct underpinning these claims while operating a large-scale educational enterprise. There is little evidence to suggest that the company is up to either of these tasks.
First, Cogswell Education is a small California-based private for-profit education company with seemingly no experience managing a large educational enterprise. Currently, it operates Cogswell College – a school with a single campus of around 600 students taking in just $6.2 million in Title IV funds in 2015-16. This contrasts starkly with the dozens of locations, tens of thousands of students, and hundreds of millions in Title IV dollars for which the company would become responsible for managing after acquiring DeVry University and the Keller Graduate School of Management.
Second, cleaning up a business operation with an entrenched culture of malfeasance will take experienced dedicated leaders – among executive and academic officers as well as the governing board. Unfortunately, Cogswell College’s website does not readily list the school’s President or other senior leadership – leaving who actually runs the school and what qualifications they may have a mystery. "
The "Dean" position is not an actual "Dean" as you would relate the same position of Dean at a state or private school. The "Dean" position at Adtalem is a sales or sales operations manager position. The "Dean" has nothing to do with educating students, and everything to do with indemnification for shareholders. Also, Adtalem is not a word.
@2ihl---My students have said nothing about the transfer and we were told by campus leadership to avoid bringing the topic up.
Aren't the students concerned about this potential shuffling? How do they react to the reduction of staff, either in the classroom, or support personnel? It seems strange they would not notice--is any of their displeasure is being addressed?
The current dean titles are Dean of Academic Affairs and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs. I can see both positions being eliminated. Also, the "presidents" of each region are a bit useless as well. They could go to.
Deans are disposable at DeVry, especially the Assistant variety or whatever they are calling the sub-deans these days. When I was there they would clean them out / reshuffle them every five years or so. If the person is well-liked politically in the organization they may get moved to another job—often by having to re-apply for it. And it may be a lower level job. It gives them right of refusal on anyone they don’t want to keep, and saves them money in their re-orgs. Deans are not safe and never have been—it’s a hot-seat position.
I'd love to know who the insiders are who will hang around. The Board? The Provosts? The various Group Deans?
:1vei: I am not a business major but it seems to me that Palm Ventures setup a shell company called Cogswell Education. LW is selling Devry to shell company, i.e., Cogswell Education so they could minimize their exposure and liabilities to employees in terms of severance and benefits. Cogswell Education has no such commitments to be liable to so they would liquidate and try to make a buck in the process.
Maybe the easy analogy is selling your old car to a car dealer so he could junk it. Devos is business friendly given her family is in a ponzi scheme like Amway so she probably is all for expanding ponzi schemes and leveraged buyouts into her new line of work.
This is going to be a quick in-and-out by Palm Ventures, to strip away and sell any parts of DeVry that have value (like, the online content and existing students). I'd be surprised if Cogswell or Palm Ventures are even in the picture, by this time next year. Not a whole lot else will be recognizable. Very few, if any, of us will be around, on the inside, anyway.
The real problem is that DeVos couldn't care less about protections for students and taxpayers. I am no fan of Durbin and Brown, but they are making some strong points here. I hope someone pays attention because we know DeVos will not.
Just grandstanding by Durbin and Brown. DeVos could care less what two hypocritical democrats think.
Will the webex videos hosted on Ad Talem servers be still available after next week?
Actually they arent far off. Step outside your little world of teaching and see whats going on in other parts of this "school."
They are complaining about the costs of Cogswell but $100k for a Bachelor’s is cheap compared to many traditional schools these days. Not sure who taught them about time-to-graduation but 4 years is aggressive and not the metric I’ve seen. And DeVry does not have an “entrenched culture of malfeasance” or whatever wording they used. That’s an absolute misstatement from where I see it. I am my colleagues try to help students the best that we can. I honestly believe that and if the Senators took the time to speak to faculty instead of making blanket accusations they would understand. We are repeatedly told what our culture should be, and what are values should be by management. While we know that management probably has cynically implemented CARE and TEACH values as a form of psychological behavioral control, it’s not doublethink. We do the best we can with our students and the prefab course content.
All of this speculation—here on the board, and now by Senators—has to do with the fact that neither DeVry nor Cogswell has said anything about this transfer since last year and it’s supposedly happening right now (or isn’t happening right now, take your pick). No one knows what’s going on. If the deal fails and Cogswell backs out (unlikely since someone is handing them tens of thousands of students and a regionally and programmatically accredited system) or the deal is quashed by politics and/or regulation (much more likely since DV/Cogswell have left too much silence), who will suffer? Adtalem has marked DV as discontinued operations so they will have to turn it into a teach out. Yes employees will suffer but it’s all of the degree holders who did make it through the system and find positions as well as students still trying to finish up their degrees. Shutting down DVU will be Adtalem’s only choice if the deal fails. And if it fails it will be due to this stupid, pointless hush-hush mentality on a massive transaction in higher education, leading to speculations of potential incompetence (Durbin’s and others’ main complaint about Cogswell—oh no, how are they going to handle the pressure? So many students! You HIRE PEOPLE who know how to do it. Look, I am a centrist but if you are going to stop market innovation because of inexperience, no new products would ever get made. Cogswell needs to have a chance to try to make the situation work, or their reputation will also suffer from the failed deal. It really can’t possibly make DeVry’s reputation worse, fine, I get that. But the effect of the letter (if there is any, and it’s not just party politicking) will be to hamper a deal and hurt all parties involved. They want Cogswell to offer a 30-day free trial?!? That’s not going to solve anything.
According to the full Durbin/Brown letter to DeVos, there is multiply documented and serious misconduct not only in DeVry's history, but among those in Cogswell with muddled ties to the most egregious for-profit institutions. I expect, though, that DeVos will ignore them, the deal will go through, and once privatized, it will be misconduct to the core with no public attention.
DeVry’s systemic misconduct has led thousands of students to apply to the Department for relief under the Higher Education Act’s borrower defense provision, which entitles student borrowers to federal student loan discharges if they are the victim of fraud or other illegal conduct by their schools. Illustrating the red flags that this should raise in the Department’s review, the parties included an option in the terms of the transaction that allows Cogswell to back out if Adtalem’s borrower defense claims exceed 2,250.
According to The Century Foundation, borrower defense applications from DeVry University and Keller have surpassed 8,200 as of March 2018– increasing from less than 100 in March 2016. The explosion of borrower defense claims at the institutions slated to be transferred to Cogswell, raises serious concerns and casts a long, dark shadow over the proposed transaction.