[2] At its peak, CCi operated over one hundred Everest, Heald and WyoTech campuses throughout the United States and Canada.
[3] The Los Angeles Times framed Corinthian Colleges as a collection of "castoff" schools that were taken over by Wall Street investors in 1999.
[7][8] Corinthian Colleges was founded in February 1995[9] by David Moore, Paul St. Pierre, Frank McCord, Dennis Devereux, and Lloyd Holland of National Education Centers, Inc., a for-profit operator of vocational schools based in Irvine, California.
The company, whose business model was predicated on acquiring schools that were fundamentally sound but performing below their potential,[10] expanded rapidly through acquisitions and organic growth.
[14] California Attorney General Kamala Harris alleged that Corinthian Colleges targeted single parents living close to the poverty level, a demographic that its internal documents described as "composed of "isolated," 'impatient,' individuals with 'low self-esteem,' who have 'few people in their lives who care about them' and who are "stuck" and "unable to see and plan well for future," through aggressive and persistent internet and telemarketing campaigns and through television ads on daytime shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich.
[16][17] On February 19, 2015, the government of Ontario suspended the company's operation license, resulting in the immediate closure of all Canadian campuses.
[45] As of June 30, 2013, CCi had approximately 15,200 employees in North America, including 6,000 full-time and part-time faculty members.
[9] For five consecutive years, CCi had been named a Top Workplace in Orange County, California where its headquarters are located.
[46] In 2014, a librarian at the southern California campus of Everest College quit her position when she learned a student she was assisting could only read at the third-grade level, may have a developmental disability, and was unlikely to find work in his chosen field.
[50] Corinthian Colleges (CCI) acquired QuickStart Intelligence in summer 2012, an Irvine, California-based, privately held technology training company.
[51] On March 25, 2013, CCi received a draft three-year Cohort Default Rates from the U.S. Department of Education for students who entered repayment during the federal fiscal year ending September 30, 2010 (the "2010 Cohort"), measured over three federal fiscal years of borrower repayment.
In 2008, a class action suit was filed against CCI and a wholly owned subsidiary in Santa Clara Superior Court on behalf of graduates of Bryman College's medical assistant vocational programs.
We are fully committed to providing quality education and job placement services for students and to being in compliance with state law and regulation.
[61] In November 2013, CCi issued a statement asserting that the California Attorney General's complaint was "a document built on a foundation of misquoted, deceptively excerpted and—at best—misunderstood materials.
"[62] It went on to say that the California Attorney General was "wrongly accusing our schools of inflating job placement statistics for our graduates".
[62] California Attorney General Kamala Harris filed a complaint alleging that CCI had engaged in a predatory marketing campaign targeting job seekers and single parents with incomes near the federal poverty level.
The complaint alleged that CCI had used aggressive Internet and telemarketing campaigns, as well as television ads on daytime shows like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich to reach these individuals.
Loans are only offered to students who have a gap between their educational costs and the available financial aid from all other government and personal sources.
The department found the school had misled students and loan agencies about the prospects for graduates to find jobs.
In May 2018, a federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Education to stop collecting on student loans related to Corinthian.
The amount forgiven would total $5.8 billion and would be the single largest discharge of student loans in history according to the department.
[53][54][55] In 2004, a former student from Florida Metropolitan University initiated an action against CCi, claiming he was misled with respect to the school's accreditation and his ability to transfer credits.
The students claimed they did not receive proper training for their careers in medical assisting, that they were misled about the program's accreditation status, their eligibility to take a national certification exam, the transferability of their credits, and the availability of internships.