She stayed on and insists the company hasn’t pushed a “cookie-cutter mentality” on the 150-year-old school. “I don’t think it has been a detriment,” Waite said. “We’ve been able to expand into health care and areas we would have expanded into anyway.”
Waite admits the new parent company’s capital helped quicken the schools growth from a few hundred to nearly 2,000 students in about seven years. They’ve also added branch campuses from Columbus to Cincinnati. “Of course the resources that are available under this structure are more than they were under a single proprietor,” Waite said.
Sale meant growth
Delta was founded in 1998 and quickly began buying up for-profit colleges and training schools with $700 million in capital from a private equity firm, according to the corporation’s website. It now operates 10 colleges with 37 campuses throughout the country, educating more than 16,000 students.
The company does not publicly report profits, but in Dayton alone, students received $1.9 million worth of financial aid to attend Miami-Jacobs during the 2007-2008 school year; 426 students received federal grants.
The rate students are defaulting on those loans, which can cover the $11,000 in annual tuition and other expenses, leapt from 7 percent in 2003 to more than 20 percent in 2007, the latest year the data is available from the U.S. Department of Education.
The school has undertaken an “aggressive” plan to get the rate under control, Waite said. She believes the percentage will shrink to 12 percent when 2008 numbers are released in September.
“We jumped on it,” Waite said. “Miami-Jacobs had a historically low default rate.”
The school is an opportunity for many who would never have a chance to attend college to find a better paying career, Waite said. She boasts of retention rates more than 70 percent and three-year graduation rates close to 50 percent.
Those numbers are significantly higher than statistics held by the U.S. Department of Education, which Waite said, only measures students enrolling in college for the first time. “We don’t have many first-time college attempts,” she said.
Miami-Jacobs now has branches in Troy, Springboro, Columbus and Cincinnati.
Accreditation difficulties
Surgery technology is taught at two of those locations as the college works to accredit the program at its branch campuses. Seven students sued Miami-Jacobs in 2008 alleging they were told the surgery technology program was accredited when the school was working toward accreditation, the lawsuit said. The students could not sit for certification exams immediately after graduation because the program did not have proper accreditation at the time. The case has gone to arbitration.
The program now is accredited at the Dayton campus, but Miami-Jacobs is forbidden from even telling students at its branch campuses that they are working toward accrediting the program, said John Ware, executive director of the Ohio Board of Career Colleges and Schools.
“The whole thing is a comedy of errors,” Ware said about the problems schools and accrediting bodies sometimes create in what he called a “convoluted and delayed” process that often requires to begin teaching a program before it is considered for accreditation.
Waite said Miami-Jacobs is clear in explaining to students when programs do not hold a specific “institutional” accreditation. “There’s no other way to do it,” she said of the process, adding that students legally don’t need to attend an accredited program, or pass a certification exam to work in Ohio.
Later this summer, school officials hope to remedy problems with their nursing and respiratory care programs that have put them at risk of losing accreditation.
“I expect to come into full compliance and meet the expectations of the board,” Waite said of “misunderstandings” with the Ohio Board of Nursing, which conditionally has approved the nursing program, and will hold a hearing on whether the school failed to have a properly qualified instructor.
Waite was less enthusiastic about the college’s respiratory program, saying the accrediting board held the school to pass standards well before it should have.
“It was absolutely too early,” she said. Waite added she didn’t believe the accrediting board wanted to “work with for-profit institutions.”
Tom Smalling, executive director of the Commission on Accreditation of Respiratory Care, said nearly 50 of the 400 schools it accredits are for-profits.
“It’s just not true,” Smalling said, adding he couldn’t comment further because “there is always a potential for further litigation.”
Miami-Jacobs as an institution is overseen by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, a Virginia-based non-profit. Anthony S. Bieda, council spokesman, said the school’s current accreditation though his agency expires in 2013 at which point they will undergo an evaluation by up to five peers.
The school also is working to win full authorization of 11 associate degree programs from the Ohio Board of Regents. The college has provisional authorization and is working to fix deficiencies.
A 36-page progress report filed in 2009 with the board of regents shows the state requested the college seek specialized accreditation for programs, hire lead instructors for general education classes and show instructors have proper credentials. A follow-up report is expected to be submitted in June.
“We are dead serious about accreditation,” Waite said.
Many of the deficiencies in the college’s programs identified by the state have been echoed in the complaints of about 100 students to State Rep. Clayton Luckie (R-Dayton).
Luckie is working to introduce legislation that would require better oversight of for-profit schools and their accreditation. The bill could be introduced later this summer.
“I’m giving them a chance to make it right,” he said.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2342 or cmagan@Dayton
DailyNews.com.
About the Author