BREAKING! Whistleblower David Goodstein Slams Kaplan and Wins!

In November of 2010, I wrote about David Goodstein's suit against Kaplan. He came to me with his story about one of Kaplan's campuses in Pennsylvania. He alleged that they lured students into signing up for a surgical-technology program that literally had no end, i.e., the program could not be completed. The students were defrauded and left with mountains of debt. Goodstein, a high-ranking employee at Kaplan, was outraged by the situation, and took action. (Kaplan is owned by the Washington Post, which is one of the reasons they never write about the student lending crisis, and especially not the for-profit issue. In fact, they have come out in defense of the for-profits. But why wouldn't they? The paper depends upon those profits. So their writers, like Michelle Singletary, spews out positive-thinking mumbo jumbo about paying down debt. She always likes to highlight exceptional cases in which people have paid off their debt, and fails to discuss the fact that we're dealing with a systemic crisis. Here's the problem with that - folks on the Hill turn to the WAPO for big news items. They take a glance at stories that discuss debtors who take hiking trips or who have paid down their debt. Then they think there isn't an issue, and they move on. That's why WAPO has lost its journalistic integrity, especially when it comes to adequately addressing the student lending crisis.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that the suit has been settled for $1.6 million. Goodstein prevailed! The official press release can be read here.

*UPDATE*

I just spoke to David again and he has agreed to answer a few questions about the case, so stay tuned for his remarks!

Here's some other bizarre news about Kaplan. Bloomberg reports that a former dean of Washington Post Co. (WPO)'s Kaplan University unit was sentenced for threatening the school and Kaplan Inc. CFO Andrew Rosen via email and on the Internet. Bennie Wilcox was sentenced to 1 year and 1 day by a federal jury in Chicago.

This was originally published on the blog All Education Matters.  It is reprinted here with permission.