got diversity? Not in the American Career College Administration

the funny thing about our education system is that it keeps lots of numbers about every school and most of it is public; however, for some reason, it is hard to get these statistics out to the prospective students as you would think. it generally requires someone to point it out for this information to get the scrutiny it deserves.

we received an email from a former member of the staff at american career college and this person put us in contact to with a number of former minority members of the administration at american career college and west coast university. what they guided us to was astonishing and shameful.

Student Diversity

using the US Department of Education’s information, we pulled these numbers concerning american career college’s and west coast university’s diversity within its student population.

to evaluate these, it is clear that the market for its schools are female minorities. female gender percentages range from 74%-79% and the white, non-minority percentages are all below 20% with the two largest campus (LA and OC) under 10%.

so what is wrong with that? isn’t it a good thing that the school is providing an opportunity for minorities to further their education? the answer to this would be a resounding yes if the huge benefits from the enrollments did not overwhelmingly provide riches for non-minority whites – mostly men as well – to the tune of millions of our tax dollars.

Senior Management Non-Diversity

using downloaded catalogs available on both the american career college and west coast university websites, we can see who runs these organizations. the most powerful and compensated leaders are the advisory board, c-level management, VPs and campus directors. let’s look at the roster:

SCORECARD

american career college -
10 listed executives – 100% white, non-minority; 70% white non-minority male

west coast university
board – 5 listed; 4 confirmed (via internet) white, non-minority males; 80%-100% white non-minority male

11 listed executives – 2 vacant positions (Ontario campus and Associate Provost recently resigned) – 100% white, non-minority; 64% white non-minority male

What is the Reason for this? Money, of course

So why would a school, that by the numbers relies on the minority communities develop a team that is 100% white, non-minority?

we are sure that you are not surprised to find out that it is greed and cash. our contacts presented us with information that we are putting together to post that shows graphs and payouts of an executive pay program that STARTS AT $1,000,000 PER EXECUTIVE (all VPs and Campus Directors). CEO, Presidents and higher levels have compensations significantly higher with the CEO/president, David Pyle, having control of $13 million to $32 million ANNUALLY FOR PERSONAL USE. This is approximately 12%-20% of every dollar of tuition received from students and/or the government. This is likely how Mr. Pyle became part of the investor group who is looking to purchase of the OC Fairgrounds.

We have receive copies of financials and the compensation program (called STAR program) and are redacting private information with plans to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we will also be putting together pages to describe the backgrounds of executives who are running these organizations today – starting with recently dismissed Anthony Pitale – the former acting COO for the schools over the last two years. Earlier in the year, we documented his involvement in the closing of Eldorado College and Orange County Business College due to unacceptable default rates for three consecutive years. Dismissals due to sexual harassment, documented mismanagement, and detailed critiques of leadership are all available for us to collect and put forth concerning the management team.

the largest problem is that we believe that this behavior, on some level, it happening at a number of the privately held, for-profit education organizations. publicly traded organizations like Corinthian and Apollo (U of Phoenix) cannot execute many of these practices because they are under the scrutiny of the SEC and their financials are in the public domain. it is smaller schools who are under-regulated and taking advantage of the increases of student loan programs for personal gain. Every taxpayer, every current student, every current employee, and every instructor should be outraged by this.