When students of Career Point College showed up to class this morning at the
Northwest San Antonio campus, they found the doors locked. Some had absolutely no idea what was going on. Others, who had checked their email yesterday, may have been a little more clued in—but not by much.
Sunday’s email, sent to all students and teachers at the for-profit school, explained that three Career Point staffers had somehow “violated the rules related to student aid funds.” After reporting this incident to the Department of Education, wrote college President Larry Earle, the feds allegedly scaled back the college’s federal funding, forcing Career Point to pull the plug.
The college's 1,400 students were given little guidance on how to move forward—only who to blame?
“In this very hostile government climate against for-profit schools, the Department of Education chose not to give the College a chance to fix its problems and instead chose to effectively terminate the College,” Earle wrote in his message to the confused students and staff. He apologized for having to close, but said the feds gave him “no choice.”
Earle gave no information on the future of students' active loans and class credits. Instead, he wrote, in a follow-up email, staff are working to connect students to other local universities to finish out their term. Career Point’s two other campuses, in Austin and Tulsa, have also been shuttered.
Career Point isn’t the only for-profit college that’s recently fizzled out in the face of financial uncertainty. In April, Corinthian Colleges, the largest for-profit two-year university system in the country, closed under the weight of federal fraud charges. ITT Tech, another for-profit chain, shut down in September for not complying with federal regulations. ITT Tech has refused to repay student loans in protest for its federal shutdown, leaving some former students drowning in debt.
Both colleges blamed the Department of Education for their demise.
In hopes of getting to the source of this issue, the Department of Education shut down the company responsible for accrediting these two major university systems last month, citing a long list of negligence. Called the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, this organization had been in charge of giving 240 institutions the green light to receive federal student loans. Career Point was one of those institutions.
