Federal Probe Targets ITT Tech
3/2/2004 -- Classes are back to normal at ITT Technical Institute campuses across the country after federal agents raided the company's headquarters and 10 of its campuses last week in response to grand jury subpoenas and search warrants seeking various enrollment data.
Last Wednesday, agents searched ITT's Indianapolis, Indiana headquarters and 10 schools, including campuses in California, Nevada, Texas, Florida, Oregon and Louisiana. The grand jury subpoenas that triggered the searches were issued by a U.S. District Court in Houston, and sought data on student placement, retention, attendance and grades, along with recruitment and admissions materials, graduate salaries, and transfers of credits to other schools.
Classes were cancelled for the day at the targeted campuses, and students, faculty and staff were questioned. In a statement, a U.S. attorney in Houston did not give a reason for the raids. No charges have been brought against the company.
ITT spokeswoman Nancy Brown said today that the probe won't affect current ITT students, and will have no effect on anyone holding a degree from any ITT Tech school. "All the colleges are open and functioning perfectly normally," she added.
At an investor conference call this morning, ITT's chairman and CEO, Rene R. Champagne said he believes the company has had strong internal controls and that the investigation "will show that we're in compliance." Analysts who focus on the education market said the probe might be related to Title IV, a federal regulation that requires education companies to report certain student data related to federal low-income grants to states. According to company regulatory filings, about 68 percent of ITT's 2003 revenue came from federal education aid programs.
The federal raids immediately affected the company's stock, which fell from last week's high in the mid-50s to a low of $34.50 last Thursday. ITT Educational Services Inc. trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "ESI." News of the probe also affected the entire for-profit education sector, whose shares tend to fluctuate as a group. ITT was trading around $35 a share by mid-week this week, and the remaining stocks in the sector had largely returned to their pre-probe numbers. "In light of the pending federal grand jury investigation of the company and resulting shareholder class action lawsuits," Champagne said during Wednesday's conference call with shareholders, "the company is not able to confirm the internal goals and other projections for the Company's 2004 fiscal year that were previously disclosed by the company."
The dramatic drop in stock prices triggered several class action lawsuits by investors late last week - a common practice when a stock price drops substantially. The lawsuits claim the company artificially maintained or inflated its stock price by issuing false facts or omitting other pertinent ones.
ITT, with some 75 locations in 30 states, is the largest operator in the U.S. of post-secondary school technical education. It offers technology-based associate, bachelor and masters degrees in a variety of subjects, including computer programming, Web development, and engineering, to over 37,000 students. It also offers online education. According to the U.S. Department of Education, ITT granted nearly 15 percent of the total number of associate and bachelor degrees awarded in the U.S. in electronics and electronics-related programs in the 2000-2001 school year, the largest percentage of any single institution.  -Linda Briggs
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There are 166  user Comments for “Federal Probe Targets ITT Tech”
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Page 9 of 17
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| 3/31/04: Anonymous says: |
Hey Reggie from Memphis!!! Maybe you should work on your English some before you go any higher so they can figure out what the big problem is with the "Straight A student". :) |
| 3/31/04: Anonymous says: |
I am a current ITT student and feel it is overpriced. However, YOU GET WHAT YOU PUT into ITT. When I walked into ITT 3 years ago; I did not know ANYTHING about computers. 3 years later I have a management position in IT. I was lied to by the recruiters like everyone else; but I could sense that they were lying. I knew I needed an education and ITT had the most well rounded program available at the time. I got my first job the 3rd quarter of my program (CNS at the time) and boy was it LOW PAYING. I felt disillusioned with my education, but I never stopped working hard to learn the most I can. That first job helped me learn what I needed to learn in order to grow in the “IT” field. Three quarters later I got in with the company I am with now and got promoted to management a year later. I will say that I know I did not learn everything I should have from ITT; however, ITT helped to get my foot in the door to both jobs I got. I graduated from the CNS program last year and am now continuing my education to get a Bachelors degree. Sure ITT is not the best school out there, but it is not the worst either. I have heard similar complaints from schools like WESTWOOD COLLEGE, DEVRY and even the UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO. THE BOTTOM LINE is all schools are in BUSINESS to MAKE A PROFIT. Some UNIVERSITIES have a great REPUTATION (HARVARD, BERKLEY, YALE, MIT ETC) and that alone will get you just about any job. But do not kid yourself. Getting into one of those schools is VERY DIFFICULT. IF you got the grades in High School;, go to the best University you can get into. DON’T GO TO ITT or ANY TECH SCHOOL. ITT is a place where adults can get an education and still have a fulltime job while attending. IT IS NOT what the RECRUITERS PROMISE; however, it can work for you if you put all your effort into it. ITT is definitely not what they advertise in all those commercials. However, ITT is BETTER than NO EDUCATION. If you are considering going to ITT you need to access your personal situation to determine if ITT is right for you. ITT is not right for everyone and it is not a quick fix. I am bitter against ITT just like many of you are. However, I think it is wrong to discourage anyone from pursuing a degree because of your own bad experiences. If you are thinking of going to school, do the research and select the school that best fits your situation. |
| 3/31/04: anonymous` from Tampa says: |
I worked as an employee for Itt in Tampa and what a joke. Marketing people were treated with dinners and gifts by how many enrollments they received for the week. Also placement, total joke. All they ever did was make the students feel like dirt. |
| 4/2/04: Dave says: |
I have used a whole box of tissues crying for all of you whom choose to complain. These sites always attract those whom are bitter and ignorant of any educational institution. Many people today choose too blame others for their own failures. Try looking at yourself in the mirror. There is a good possibility that your problem starts with you. |
| 4/2/04: Anonymous says: |
Dave, I am a sixth quarter student with a 4.0 GPA, ITT sucks ass and these people have reason to complain. It is quite clear from your post that you do not attend an ITT campus? Am i correct in this assumption? The institution is horrible and i agree with everyone because i attend ITT Tech and i see this stuff all the time. Although i do agree with you that many people point the finger at someone else when they are at fault themselves. I am making the best grades possible and i absolutley think ITT is horrible in almost every aspect. |
| 4/2/04: aye-get-em from COLORADO says: |
Please post this whole document as I am trying to help those like me: I am back and I feel that the best thing to do is to organize. First it you are having troubles with you student loans pay back (there can be multiple payments to each loan!) I can help you with this. Second we should organize and this will bring us all to the forefront. I have a lawyer who is willing to look into our complaints. The following is necessary to get things started: 1.An email address. 2.Name (for listing purposes). 3.Phone number. 4.Your complete complaint. 5.Dates that you attended ITT tech. 6.Which campus and state. 7.What loans did you have? 8.A list if others that you know with the same complaints. 9.What will satisfy your arguments? 10.Be willing and able to take out small ads to help locate other students. 11.Hope we will be victorious. 12.Do not let the feeling of helplessness get the best of you. 13.You are not alone!!!!!!!!! 14.AYE is not going to let up until these things are resolved. 15.I have found some solutions, but I also welcome your suggestions. 16.Explain to those who feel that you are just not applying yourself. Tell them that you made a mistake; this does not mean that you are through trying to better your life. 17.If what you desire is to get the education you wanted, go to another school. I recommend Louisiana Technical University. Tuition respective of average colleges. If you student loans are stopping you, as I said earlier I could help you to get them straight so you will again be eligible for grants and other loans if needed. Latech has dorms to live in so you don’t have to worry about living arrangements. Their website is http://www.latech.edu/. Check them out. They helped me out. 18.Make sure steps from now on; if you need some advice email me. 19.Keep working even when you go to school. If you go to LaTech in Ruston, La there is a town close Monroe, La. I am sure that some kind of work is available for you. 20.I was there and had no help but I was successful for two and a half years. 21.last and not least I will find the best course we need to go. AYE. Defauted loans are no problem for me to handle unless you have defaulted on a consolidation. |
| 4/2/04: Colleen from West Covina says: |
Most peoplr get trapped in this sort of fraud, whn searching for a place that will give you the options for getting educated. We were looking for a place to begin, with the advantage of being able to keep a full time job while attending. I attended the West Covina campus for 2 years in the CAD program. All we learned was AutoCAD. It's true, the teachers are not very qualified. You could easily receive an "A" just for keeping conversation with the instructors. The only two professors worth anything were Mr. Espinoza and Mr. Hacobian. You can easily enroll in a community college and get better results. I do not regret attending, but I regret the debt I'm in for that worthless piece of paper. |
| 4/2/04: JoseR from Edwardsville IL says: |
I am in my eigth quarter at ITT at Earth City MO. In 2 months I will graduate from the Multimedia assosiates program. I will graduate with a 3.9 cumulative GPA. I'm a member of the "nationaly recognized honor society" NV-THS. I can't speak for the CNS or SAP or any other programs at ITT but I can tell you all that the MM program has been the biggest disappointment in my life. Before anyone calls me a "crybaby" I will admit that I have become much more responsable and mature in my time at ITT. I have leaned the basics of MM. But that is where my 32k of tuition ends. The first 3 quarters are basic and gen ed courses so the fact that I had learned nothing of MM didn't seem that bad. On my first day of 4th quarter prior to class, we were standing in the hall talking to the lab assitant "Tom". His first words to us were "Go to borders and buy your own books. Read them well and do as many tutorials as you can find because this guy" Instructor Steve MacSpadden "isn't gonna teach you sh-t". It took about 3 weeks for us to realize that Tom was not kidding around. Our teacher would read the NIIT books to us word for word, stuttering as he went for 2.5 hours of theory then send us to the lab where we were basically on our own. The photoshop and illustrator class were not so bad. Anyone with a pirated copy of photoshop and a 30 dollar book from borders can teach themself photoshop. It was the 3Ds Max class that showed us that we were screwed. Our instructor (the only MM instructor ITT has) had no clue what he was teaching us. We would do the lab as it was written in the NIIT lab manual and our whole class would get to the same place and get stuck. We would ask for help and the instructor would tell us to start over because we had obviously all done it wrong. We would do it again and get stuck at the same place. At this point the instructor would get frustrated and start doing the lab himself. we would go to lunch and come back to find the instructor still stuck at the same part we left at. Class would end in one of two ways. 1. Through trial and error one of us would figure out that the lab manual was completely wrong and that person would go around teaching the rest of the class including our worthless instructort how to finish the lab or 2. we would all leave and get a's just for being there. There was even one quarter where the class was AudioVideo technigues. We did nothing in that class for 12 weeks. The first 6 weeks we would work on our other classes asignments while the instructor (same guy as before) struggled to get the capture card working so we could have adio and video to use for the class. After the 6th week the instructor had given up on even trying to teach the class. He spend his days looking at PT Cruisers on the internet and downloading who knows what from KaZaa. There was 3 ocasions when I went to the Dean to voice my concerns about the instructors lack of expertise on the course materials. To my knowledge the instructor was never talked to about this. I have done my homework. I have gotten copies of the programs I am supposed to know how to use. I have bought my own books from borders and done countless tutorials from the internet and elswhere. I will now gradute with novice at best skills in the majority of programs. I am not qualified for a job in the field. I don't even deserve a degree. But my transcripts will say I'm a f-ckin genious. 32 thousand dollars to go to a school that has error filled NIIT books, computers that crash on a daily basis, an instructor with no ability to teach and barely an ability to learn, a dean who cares more about the student not wearing hats in class and making sure that the lab doors are closed than he cares about the quality of education that his students are getting, instructors that literally make fun of you when you dont understand a topic but they refuse to explain it to you because they dont understand it them self, and I could keep going but I have a meeting with an advisor from my local 4 year college in 30 minutes. I have no intentions of using my MM degree for anything other than a hobby. I have no hopes of getting a job and living up to the expectations of an employer in MM. I'm have no money, huge debt, and no job to pay for my miseducation at ITT. Next year I plan on starting the road to a bachelors of computer sciences at SIUE. I will leave you with these words to live by. "Friends don't let friends go to ITT Tech" |
| 4/5/04: Anonymous says: |
I agree 100% with JoseR. |
| 4/5/04: Dave from Lake Bluff, Il. says: |
What a bunch of mindless sheep! Quit crying and feeling sorry for yourselves and get on with your life. There are many people out there that would love to have the opportunity that you all cry about. If it makes you happy to wallow in self-pity that's great but spare the rest of us. The time has come for you to grow up and be an adult. |
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