W.Va. Educator: ITT Targeted Low-Income Students

The chancellor of West Virginia’s Community and Technical College System told state lawmakers Monday that the recently closed ITT Technical Institutes, a national for-profit group of colleges that had a Huntington campus, appeared to enter very low-income communities and promise students 100 percent job placement rates, while charging them high tuition and issuing them its own loans to pay what the federal government wouldn’t.

“The least expensive program offered at ITT Tech’s campus in Huntington was $45,800,” Sarah Tucker told members of the Legislative Oversight Commission on Education Accountability during legislative interim meetings. “One of the programs that they offered that tuition for was the medical assisting program. A medical assistant starts in the state of West Virginia at $20,000 a year.”

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