Camden County College Hosting Special Welcome Night For Displaced ITT Students

Gloucester Township, NJ -- Camden County College is welcoming displaced ITT Technical Institute students after it was announced that college would be closing for good on Tuesday.

The special Meet CCC Night will take place on Thursday, Sept. 8, 6:30 p.m. in the Taft Presentation Room on the Blackwood campus.

The college hosts a Meet CCC Night every Thursday night at 6:30 p.m. in Taft Hall, but this one is aimed at ITT students looking for a new school, according to college officials.

"We offer a variety of credit and non-credit courses into which students can seamlessly transfer," Camden County College President Don Borden said. "Financial aid is still available and we haven't even started the 13-week and 10-week semesters yet."

"Short-term job training certificates are available in manufacturing, networking, computerized drafting, PLC programming, and microcomputer repair,” said Dr. Melvin Roberts, Division of Business, Computer, and Technical Studies. “Students leave here job ready."

The college also emphasised that it is a military friendly school with a Veterans Center, since many displaced ITT students are veterans.

"We offer a full array of veterans benefits,” Executive Dean of Enrollment and Student Services Dr. James Canonica said.

Students can RSVP and find out more about Meet CCC Nights at http://www.camdencc.edu/meetccc/index.cfm.

ITT has operated for 50 years and is estimated to serve about 43,000 students on 130 campuses spread across 38 states. It has just one location in New Jersey, in Marlton.

The “actions of sanctions by the U.S. Department of Education have forced us to cease operations” immediately, leaving tens of thousands of students about to begin the September quarter scrambling for options, ITT Educational Services Inc., the company that operates the college, said in a news release.

The DOE showed “complete disregard … for due process to the company,” negatively affecting students, alumni and more than 8,000 employees, the company said.

The college said the decision was reached “only after having exhausted the exploration of alternatives, including transfer of students to a non-profit or public institution.”

Last month, the Education Department banned the school from enrolling new students who receive federal aid after its accrediting agency cited chronic mismanagement of finances and questionable recruiting tactics.
Federal aid provided 68 percent of parent company ITT Educational Services Inc.’s $850 million in revenues.

This spring, ITT was the fifth-largest for-profit college chain, and was among several under scrutiny by the Obama administration, which said the for-profit industry in general uses deceptive marketing tactics to enroll students who accrue thousands of dollars of debt for low-quality educations.

The school’s enrollment has been dwindling, down 22 percent from 9,910 in the second quarter of 2016 from 12,638 for the year prior.

In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal recently called the Education Department’s decision to cut off funding a “lawless execution” and said the action was taken without proving a single allegation.

The company said it believes the government’s action was “inappropriate and unconstitutional” but said that with the shuttering of ITT Technical Institutes, “it will now likely rest on other parties to understand these reprehensible actions and to take action to attempt to prevent this from happening again.”

Reporting from Patch Staff Writer Beth Dalbey was used in this report.

The attached image is a Patch file photo