Why There Is A Need For An EDMC Settlement Administrator

By Laura Hayes


The Education Management Corporation is a for profit organization that recruits students in its schools to earn a degree and become good middle class professionals, at least. But due to the nature of this organization, there was investigations were made to prove that EDMC violated federal and state False Claims Acts provisions. This has caused a spur among learners and tax payers since there were a lot of damages incurred.

To prevent this from happening again settlements were made and new regulations were put in place. This is where the EDMC settlement administrator comes in. They are basically a third party service that reviews compliance with the new terms and agreements put up for the EDMC.

This kind of scrutiny is implemented because of the long running malpractice of recruitment and deceptive marketing by the organization. Recruiting personnel would receive commissions based on the number of enrollees they had. They deceived applicants into thinking that they were qualified and had programs accredited by authorized industry specific institutions, just to feign their credibility.

Their deceptive marketing also violated the Consumer Protection Act. Graduates from the institution fail to get into internships in their fields because there were only false attempts of pursuing these industry accreditation. These legal violations have incurred the company 102.8 million dollars in debt and they are required to pardon this same amount to the former students that qualify for the loan forgiveness.

Extensive measures have been made to make sure that the organization is operating their business cleanly. Methods like listening to phone calls made by the company to prospective enrollees and reviewing chat messages are some of the ways to make sure the organization does not go out of line again. These issues caused the stock market value of this particular for profit organization to continuously go down since 2013.

Qualification for loan forgiveness is decided from three factors. The first indicator is if the person enrolled in the associated school with fewer than 24 hours of transferred credits. Second, they withdrew from school within 45 days since the first day of their first term. Lastly, their last day in school should be days in between January 1, 2006 through December 31,2014. The settlement administrator does not decide who should receive money from this.

Since the settlement administrator is a third party, they essentially do not work with the company in question. The administrator remains neutral and unbiased in the investigation, observations and delivers annual reports about compliance. While they do not resolve individual complaints about the schools under the ruling of the organization, they can provide legal advice, determine whether a person is eligible for loan forgiveness and check for compliance on legal obligations.

These administrators investigate and make these eligible reports by listening to recorded phone calls, reviewing student complaints, looking at EDMC records and interviewing current and former students under the program. A summary containing a public report shall be provided annually. The said report shall be given to the state attorney general and the EDMC.

This kind of fraudulent activity results to unqualified professionals, the same ex students who are buried in student debt. These precautions and done for proper disclosure of costs and programs, marketing and recruitment. While the settlement agreement might prevent anymore scams, many say that the amount to be paid is not high enough to cover up for financial and moral damages.




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