THE ART OF A
COLLEGE EDUCATION
school is displacing tenants.”
The school does, however, appear open to the proposition of
creating new facilities. “Anything is possible,” Delgado says.
“Once everything settles with
this new law, we will take a look
at building new housing.”
DIALING FOR DOLLARS
The Academy of Art’s real estate
boom was a direct result of student demand. Thousands of budding artists were flooding into San
Francisco each year, and everyone
needed a place to live.
One possible factor for the
Academy’s rapid enrollment
growth was suggested in a 2009
lawsuit filed by three former
Academy of Art enrollment advisors. The suit alleged that Academy officials enticed its sales force
to enroll legions of students by
doling out Hawaiian vacations to
top recruiters — a practice prohibited by federal law.
Rewarding people for sales success makes sense in most industries, but it can lead to conflicts
of interest in higher education. “It
creates an incentive to enroll as
many students as possible, without any thought to their ability to
do the coursework,” says attorney
HUFFINGTON
10.28.12
Stephen Jaffe, who is representing
the plaintiffs in the suit.
Academy officials won’t comment on the suit since it’s still
pending in court.
Earlier this year, California’s
infamously cash-strapped government looked to winnow down the
cost of its Cal Grants program,
which provides tuition assistance
for college-bound Golden State
residents. To better focus resources, the state raised the benchmarks for what a school needs to
qualify for the money: a 30 percent graduation rate and a 15.5
percent loan default rate. Academy of Art was one of 154 schools
that slipped below this threshold.
While the vast majority of
schools disqualified from the program were cut for having unacceptably high student loan default
rates, Academy of Art was one of a
small handful that missed out because its graduation rate was too
low. The university has sued the
state, asking to be readmitted to
the program because it has since
upped its graduation rate from 29
percent to 34 percent.
“The Academy of Art does a
good job of providing financial
literacy for its students and keeping the number of defaults to a
minimum,” said Ed Emerson of
the California Student Aid Commission. “But even a 34 percent