“I feel like I was set up to fail”: Inside a for-profit college nightmare

Some schools feast on federal aid and don't care if the student can repay it. Here's one woman's tragic story

Adam Rust

Jaqueta Cherry did not have a glittering GPA or a résumé loaded with internships and varsity letters. She dropped out of high school at age 17. But last fall, right after she received a general equivalency diploma, for-profit colleges and universities besieged her with offers of admission. Admissions officers told her that she could start right away. They said she could get a degree that would help her land a professional job working in computers. Hoping to escape from a future of dead-end jobs, she enrolled in a two-year associate’s program at Everest University Online.

But a year later, she has failed or dropped out of six courses at two different schools. She has never earned a single credit hour. Despite attending Everest University Online and then later the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online, she still cannot find a “salary job.” But now she has thousands of dollars in outstanding federal student loans. And she’s not the only one.