I don't think it's up to 'the government', it's up to the courts. It seems pretty clear to me that the school should have educated the students, and didn't. Hopefully the courts will see it that way as well.
Yes, I know that means the taxpayer footing the bill. The government was responsible for accrediting, regulating and auditing the colleges. The government, and collectively the people, are responsible for any failures in that duty and any individual citizens harmed as a result deserve compensation.
Note I'm not a US citizen, so my comments are meant in general.
If feds do this, the universities need to be held accountable as well, a 50/50 split of the relief amount would be a thought. Why should the whole burden be placed on the tax payers, when the universities have benefited immensely from this fiasco.
One of the peculiarities of the situation is that because so many Universities receive federal funding, they wind up being held accountable as if they were some other government institution. I suspect if this had happened at a totally private college taking in no federal money the case would have been decided differently.
2. The students who agreed to the debt for receiving the services of the universities.
3. And everyone else, who had nothing to do with the above transaction. Many of this group were working class who never went to school or people who already paid their school debts long ago.
There is no way of looking at that scenario and saying that group #3 should be the one paying. It so deeply wrong that I almost feel ashamed watching people defend the heist.
If the government forcibly clawed back the money from the schools and the admins and the professors and (yes) the fat endowments, the media would howl bloody murder. But it would be relatively fair.
The only thing that I want to point out is that the federal government should prosecute these for profit "universities" to receive the loan back, since there is good evidence that they were practicing fraud against students.
So, taking precautions to remove the college from a situation that could be detrimental to the college as a whole is wrong? Let's say they stepped up and went beyond their responsibilities to help, let's say it failed, let's say the family sues the school since they accepted responsibility. How exactly does that help the rest of the student body and the accepted responsibilities, such as educating, the school has towards them? This is not the simple black and white situation many feel it should be.
As I recall the various law enforcement agencies decided not to do anything which left the civil lawsuits which started the fury. So the end game is that one student gets 175K in trust, another $10K, their lawyers get $425K (why are we surprised it's more than twice what the students are getting?) and of course the taxpayers will be paying the bill.
I don't know, I have a hard time finding sympathy for this.
I've paid many thousands of dollars towards courses to get my degree from a top university and most of them were awful. As with any university, there's of course no way to get a refund or make any public complaints that would yield an outcome.
First, we don't know whether the children of the guilty were kicked out of school.
So, the only victims here are students and athletes who lost an earned spot in university. But they don't have any agency here.
The universities administration has no skin in the game - they get paid, the endowments are bountiful, and the professors keep on suffering on. There may even be a backslaps and high five deal to recapture any "lost" income.
The guilty here are resourceful and powerful, so really, the court case is more of a negotiation at best. Kiss the hand of the king and receive a small slap on the wrist sort of a deal.
The government has bigger fish to fry than worry about fairness.
I should have been more clear in my comment, but I am not saying I think it's ok that the school did this. I was suggesting that they could have done it in a desperate attempt for funding. But my main point is that you shouldn't sue schools, because you're just taking (your own) money away from students.
Assuming it’s true, I think the government should step in because price fixing is illegal, really doesn’t matter who or why, and the students who paid more because of this scheme should be compensated.
And having all these schools’
names be dragged through the mud during the court proceedings will further your goal.
In this case (although he doesn’t mention what university it was), it is a “private” university. But the removal of due process from Title IX procedures was due to the threat from Obama to withold federal grant money from schools that continued to insist on fairness. Universities can not survive without this funding, so the government is directly involved in this abuse.
I think this is an issue for the universities to settle with their employees that are diverting funds away from the universities for personal gain.
It becomes a government and criminal matter when those same private institutions benefit from government regulations, such as loan guarantees, that are not available to other private institutions.
I wonder why they are only mentioning the “wealthy parents” in this article over the corrupt administrators that enabled them?
One of the US attorneys wasting our federal tax dollars prosecuting the parents even pointed it out: they bribed the college the wrong way, by not buying them a building like they were supposed to. "We're not talking about donating a building...we're talking about fraud."
So the injured parties here are the universities, and their complaint is they got cut out on the bribe dollars. Which is fine and all, but I don't understand at all why that's our problem. That's the universities' problems, and they should feel free to sue their employees for not sharing bribes appropriately.
Health care fraud actually hurts people and steals from the federal government, so there's two good reasons to spend our resources prosecuting it.
One news story [1] has a copy of the suit within the article. Suit [2]
No word on exact amounts being sued for over and beyond compliance enforcement. I am all for compliance but there needs to be safeguards against excessive lawyer fees and actual damages at most could only be applicable to one defendant. It is clear from previous cases that they are claiming damages
The fact so many state colleges have not complied should be an embarrassment to the states which this is true and if wider spread should be an absolute requirement before federal funds are given to any state college to include providing backing to student loans.
Compensatory and damages in an amount to be determined by proof, including all applicable statutory and punitive damages and fines, to Plaintiff and the proposed class for violations of their civil rights under The Rehabilitation Act of 1973, New York State Human Rights Law and City Law; f.
Pre- and post-judgment interest; g.
An award of costs and expenses of this action together with
reasonable attorneys’ and expert fees; and
-31- h.
Such other and further relief as this Court deems just and proper
IMO it's not the students that are in the wrong, it's the officials. The fact that they knew about this loophole and didn't nothing to close it is tantamount to bribery if you ask me.
If you read the article, you’ll see that the universities in question have already, voluntarily, given partial refunds to students prior to these lawsuits.
The lawsuits are demanding even more refunds while the students still want to collect the remote education. If the Universities were faced with this decision up front, it would have been better for them to furlough all employees and simply delay education until after Coronavirus.
Instead, they made the best of the situation and tried to do right by the students as best they could within the financial, legal, and ethical constraints of Coronavirus. In my opinion, it’s not reasonable to demand universities operate at a loss to provide the remote education at a rate less than it costs them to operate (which I suspect may be happening already in some cases). We’re all making compromises under the circumstances.
I’d be more sympathetic if these students were requesting to defer their education until after Coronavirus and were willing to forgo all education and credits in the mean time. Demanding both the education and a refund isn’t exactly fair.
Yes, I know that means the taxpayer footing the bill. The government was responsible for accrediting, regulating and auditing the colleges. The government, and collectively the people, are responsible for any failures in that duty and any individual citizens harmed as a result deserve compensation.
Note I'm not a US citizen, so my comments are meant in general.
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