For the last 30 years, a group of schools have targeted America's most vulnerable students, saddling them with mountains of debt and a poor education, all for the sake of profit. Mike DiGiacomo fell victim to two of these schools. For a transcript of this episode: https://bit.ly/campusfiles-transcripts To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Kept telling her how I was insecure financially. She said, you're not gonna have to worry, trust me. She said, you just have to accept. I told her how it was advertised to me as number one. She said that that was a lie on the website and that almost all the students are let in.
That's Evan. You heard from him a few weeks ago when he shared his experience with USC's online social work program. What Evan and his classmates didn't know at the time was that the program wasn't actually being run by USC. It was being run by a for-profit company called 2U.
As we were doing research for that episode, it became clear that Evan's story was just one part of a much larger issue, for-profit education. It's a topic that we wanted to take a closer look at. These schools, they're notorious. Federal legislators have known about these shady behaviors for decades, decades.
For over 30 years, a network of colleges and universities has preyed on America's most vulnerable students, luring them into taking out loans that they'll likely never be able to repay. Anytime you have a program that's the size of the federal student aid program, it's going to attract people who see it as a way to make money.
While these schools rake in billions of dollars, it's the students who are left saddled with debt. And so I put together this very extensive Google form and we got just under 500 borrowers to fill it out. And we were collectively $70 million in debt.
Normally on Campus Files, we bring you a new story every week, but this topic is too big to cover in just one episode. So, over the next few weeks, we're bringing you a three-part story about for-profit colleges and universities in America. The series will be written and narrated by my colleague, Ian Montt.
I'm Ian Mont. This week on Campus Files, for-profit part one, The Pain Funnel. This story begins outside the classroom, in the fantasy world of a video game. Long ago, a lone sorcerer saved the last of his kind from an unstoppable invasion. Asheron's call was and wizardry and spells and archery game. The Empyrean left this world to a race of insects, the Ulthoi.
I had a character that was good with swords and a bow. He went on these little adventures and it was pretty fun. That's Mike DiGiacomo. Back in 2002, he was a supply and logistics specialist for the US Army, stationed in Alaska. By day, he jumped out of planes and tracked equipment. But off-duty, his world revolved around a video game called Asheron's Call.
It was actually referred to me by some people that played from the barracks. It was very popular amongst the other soldiers that were playing. They always updated it and everybody would rush to try to complete the update to see who could do stuff first or just like hang out with friends or, you know, it was a community thing, so it was fun.
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