More Uninformed Bad-Mouthing at Motley Fool


I like fool.com. I’ve found it to be a great resource over the years and I think very highly of the con­trib­u­tors. As a reader, it’s easy to take the off-hand slights on com­pany after com­pany for granted — if they’re writ­ing it, it must be true. But some­times, once in a while, I’ll catch some­thing on Apollo Group that is misconstrued.




Tech­no­rati Tags: ,





This time, it’s Rich Duprey, for­mer police offi­cer and stock expert (my tongue is NOT in my cheek — they guy’s actu­ally aces on the mar­ket sitch), who pro­vides us this lit­tle bit of slan­der:


“The com­pany, and indeed much of the indus­try, has been dogged by alle­ga­tions of mis­rep­re­sent­ing grad­u­a­tion and job-placement rates, low­er­ing admis­sion stan­dards, and pay­ing recruiters to get warm bod­ies in their class­rooms. Last year, Apollo was fined $9.8 mil­lion for admit­ting unqual­i­fied stu­dents to boost enroll­ment at its Uni­ver­sity of Phoenix online campus.”




There are a cou­ple of prob­lems with that state­ment. First, the dif­fer­ence between a fine and a set­tle­ment. Apollo was never fined. Apollo set­tled a claim inves­ti­gated by the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion that alleged Uni­ver­sity of Phoenix com­pen­sated enroll­ment staff in a man­ner that was out of align­ment with their stip­u­la­tions; in this case, the enroll­ment coun­sel­lor role was not able to accrue over­time, they were part of an exempt role. That’s a no-no — they need to be non-exempt, oth­er­wise their payscale starts to look too much like a pay for per­for­mance gig.



When the DOE inves­ti­ga­tion com­menced, the orga­ni­za­tion reviewed, eval­u­ated and over­hauled the enroll­ment com­pen­sa­tion plan to patch up any loose threads. Nine months later, when the DOE fin­ished their inves­ti­ga­tion, the orga­ni­za­tion returned to the table in the form of a set­tle­ment to com­pen­sate all enroll­ment staff work­ing under the faulty matrix for hours they should have been paid. That $9.8 mil­lion? That went directly to the staff. If it had been a fine, it would have gone to the feds.



I’m no legal scholar, but I was a part of much of the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing the scop­ing of the com­pen­sa­tion plan and let me tell you, it was noth­ing if not com­pletely above board.



Of course, my man Rich doesn’t know all that back-story. And why should he? This sit­u­a­tion was reported incor­rectly by the press time and time again. Even the grand old lady “60 Min­utes” lumped us in the same cat­e­gory as Career Edu­ca­tion unjustly.



Keep up the good writ­ing, Rich. Just drop me an email next time you’re going to toss in the Apollo fine vibe — I want to help keep it straight!