One FPOU student in the ad says he enrolled in online classes because life on a traditional campus was “a nightmare.”
“Now my laptop is basically my brain,” the student says.
The online ad critiques for-profit schools’ corporate approach to education by placing “data harvesting ad bots” in the virtual reality online classroom — avatars that “subsidizes” other students’ education.
“This isn’t a scam like real college,” a FPOU spokesman says in the online ad. “Come, profit with us.”
See below for eCampus News for-profit college coverage from the past few years, covering everything from government regulations on the industry to allegations of unethical business practices to persistent concerns that for-profit education might hurt the reputation of online learning.
Obama: for-profit colleges “making out like a bandit”: President Obama delivered a forceful message to the predatory for-profit college industry. In response to a question at an event Friday at Binghamton University in New York state, Obama said these businesses were “making out like a bandit” preying on veterans and other students, as well as taxpayers.
U.S. for-profit colleges spend big on marketing while slashing other costs: Google’s biggest advertiser is neither a bank nor a retailer. It’s the for-profit University of Phoenix, which has recently been spending nearly $400,000 a day on ads, according to search analytics firm SpyFu, more than any financial firm or retailer, the traditional big spenders on online advertising.
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