That led to the institution to pay out $4.5 million, $2.5 million of which went directly to students.The UEI College Phoenix campus wants to personally welcome you to our campus. The Colorado attorney general settled a lawsuit in 2012 with Alta Colleges over what the state described as “deceptive business practices” that included misleading students and deceptive advertising. State attorneys general investigations of Westwood College helped to inform the Education Department's inquiry of Burnett. The department has erased about $130 million in connection to borrower defense claims from students who attended Westwood. The agency discharged the debt through the borrower defense rule, a federal initiative that can refund students their student loans if they prove their college defrauded them.
Though Westwood closed in 2016, the federal government in 2022 still canceled the federal student loan debt of students who had attended. Rather, the agency had requested more information from Burnett because of his role overseeing Westwood College and the associated borrower defense claims, documents show. The Education Department's inquiry was not related to the University of Phoenix. He went on to manage Northcentral University, a private university in California before taking the University of Phoenix job. Westwood closed in 2016 after being dinged repeatedly by state and federal investigations.īurnett was the president of Alta College but left in 2011. The agency said the online college falsely told students it had partnerships with major companies such as Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo! that would lead to jobs.Īt question in the Department of Education inquiry was Burnett’s role in managing Westwood College, a chain of for-profit colleges owned by Alta Colleges Inc. The University of Phoenix also has been the subject of federal inquiries. In 2019, the institution settled a case with the Federal Trade Commission worth nearly $200 million. “While our actions today will relieve Corinthian Colleges’ victims of their burdens, the Department of Education is actively ramping up oversight to better protect today’s students from tactics and make sure that for-profit institutions – and the corporations that own them – never again get away with such abuse," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said. The agency and the Office of the Vice President announced this week that the federal government would cancel nearly $5.8 billion in student loan debt for students who had attended the now-closed Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit university with a long history of fraud. The Education Department ramped up its oversight of colleges that take federal money and deceive students. Some of those cases helped lead to the federal government canceling $130 million in student loan debt tied to the deception of Westwood College students. The department questioned Burnett’s time overseeing Westwood College, a for-profit college based in Westminster, Colorado, that had run-ins with federal and state regulators over deceptive advertising among other concerns. George Burnett was appointed the president of the University of Phoenix in February, and at the time, the university spoke highly of his “deep understanding of our purpose of helping working adults acquire a higher education.”ĭocuments obtained exclusively by USA TODAY show that Burnett’s departure came after an inquiry by the Department of Education.īILLIONS IN STUDENT LOANS ERASED: Feds say Corinthian Colleges preyed on students
The head of one of the largest for-profit universities in the country resigned months after taking the post.
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