Remington College

I was more than a little dismayed to find an ad for Remington College when I opened my blog this morning. I immediately regretted my decision to allow them to post ads alongside my ramblings. Fortunately, few if any people read my blog and so I don't think anyone will be harmed by exposure to this private college's ads encouraging students to challenge themselves.
I tried to teach English and speech at Remington's Memphis campus for four years. Although I was originally excited to be teaching in a college classroom after 20 years as a journalist, I quickly came to realize that I was taking part in a criminal enterprise that preys upon the poor and plunders a program designed to help qualified students fund their education.
I've heard that they've been forced to scale back both their tuition and programs, but in the years I worked for Remington (2004-08) tuition for students was more than $15000 a year, funded nearly entirely by grants and student loans. For $30000, graduates of Remington received an associate's degree than was hardly worth the paper it was printed on. A graduate of Remington would discover how worthless than paper was whenever they attempted to transfer to a four-year college such as the University of Memphis. That's when they'd find out that virtually none of their 60-plus credits would be accepted. After two full years at Remington, these poor kids were still freshman, if they were accepted at all.
Remington's strategy in Memphis was to attract low-income students (mostly women) who could qualify for large grants and loans. As an incentive, Remington students were provided with a cheap laptop computer which they could keep after graduation.
The entrance exam was a complete joke created by the folks at Wonderlich. Composed of 100 questions on a variety of subjects, prospective students needed to answer just 30 questions correctly in order to qualify for admission. Incredibly, many students needed 2-3 chances in order to pass the "test."
While many of my students were uninterested in education, my heart went out to the few real students who were genuinely interested in obtaining an education. I would often privately counsel them to get out of Remington and into an accredited college such as Southwest Tenn CC or the University of Memphis.
I realized I was part of a criminal enterprise when I found my supervisors were routinely falsifying attendance records and changing grades in order to bulk up the school's standing.
I would have resigned years earlier, but my wife needed a liver transplant and I needed to keep the health insurance Remington provided to full-time faculty.
Congress is currently considering legislation to limit the way these private colleges qualify for the student loan program, I have written to ny adopted congressman, Steve Cohen, in support of this legislation.
I am posting this warning in hopes that prospective Remington students find my blog and stay away from the thieves that operate Remington Colleges.