For profit colleges in the 2000s and 2010s had some... interesting ads
These ads dominated our TVs, but how many of these colleges still exist today?
For a time in the 2000s, for-profit colleges dominated television. Commercials for these colleges filled the airwaves. Many of them were ridiculous, some of them were iconic. All had one goal: to get you to apply to their college. Those who did ended up regretting it. Here are some of the most infamous for-profit college TV commercials and what happened to them after their heyday.
You'll notice later that many of these for-profit colleges went under around the mid-2010s. This is largely because the Department of Education's intervention and increasing regulations during the Obama administration forced them to shut down one way or another.1
Westwood College tightens up the graphics
This is definitely one of the more infamous for-profit college ads on this list. Needless to say, game testing is not as "cool" as this ad implies, and anyone with even a passing knowledge of development (which includes most gamers) knows this from the cheesy dialog alone.
Speaking of cheesy dialogue, lets talk about the ad’s contents. Our two gamers are playing a video game at their workplace, their conversation clearly trying to imply that these two are slacking off instead of doing their job, but when their boss comes in, it turns out that their job is to test video games. What a twist! She needs them to play harder, another video game needs to be designed!!! Cue the iconic line:
“We just finished level three and need to tighten up the graphics a little bit.”
The graphics were just too loose. I guess that's the problem with games today, they don’t take the time to tighten em up. Imagine seeing one of those apology statements that game devs send out nowadays, but instead they're talking about loose graphics:
“From the Game Company team,
We are deeply sorry that Shit Simulator 2 was launched with subpar, loose graphics. Our devs were only able to test up to level 3 and we couldn’t tighten up the graphics in time for release. We hope to resolve this in an update.”
Boss exits, and the two talk about how great it is to video game for a living, as one of them puts it, “… and my mom said I would never get ANYWHERE with these games!” There’s a bit of rage in that sentence, as if he holds such anger and resentment towards his mother for trying to hold him and his gaming dreams back, but look at him, now he's in a terrible commercial for a for-profit college. Who's laughing now, Mom?
Westwood College, not for people in Texas or Massachusetts. There has to be someone out there who lives in one of those states, who was really into what they saw in that commercial. In the span of 30 seconds, they envisioned a new dream for themselves, where they could game all they could for a job and tell everyone to just tighten up the graphics, only for that dream to shatter into pieces when they find out they will never become a cool game tester like these people, all because they live in a place that actually has laws on these sorts of colleges.
If game testing isn’t your thing, Westwood also offered Game Design:
On second thought, maybe choose a place with better graphics. Oh shit, did they forget to tighten up the graphics here?
Aftermath: The infamous Game Tester ad was for Westwood College Online, the online learning version of Westwood College. It's not known when Westwood College Online closed, but Westwood College itself would close in 2016, citing "an extended period of declining enrollment due to market shifts and changes in the regulatory environment." Students scrambled to find another college that would accept them. 2
ICDC College brings in Lil Romeo
what?????????????????????????? why???????????????????????? and most importantly, lil romeo?????????????????????????????????
Romeo Miller talks about how important it is for you to go to college like he did. There's a disclaimer at the end that basically says he's only being paid to promote ICDC College, and doesn't actually state that the college he went to was ICDC (he did have a brief stint at USC). He ends it with a hilariously awful song with the nonsensical lyric "I'm so ICDC!"
I'm sorry to say this, but are people really that inspired by Romeo telling them to go to ICDC? I don't think there's anyone in the world who would have said unironically, “Hell yeah! I wanna be so ICDC like my hero, Romeo Miller!”
Aftermath: ICDC College closed in 2016, just 3 years after these commercials were made. Classes continued under another for-profit company. Guess Lil' Romeo didn't have the celebrity power after all.
You remember ITT Tech, right?
There is no one distinctive ITT Tech commercial, but those who watched television in the 2000s will remember them. They always featured regular, everyday people talking about how their lives sucked until they went to ITT Tech, with many talking about how their lives have improved and how they can now provide for their families. Cue tagline: “We are educators helping people build a foundation for the rest of their lives.” In reality, they were more or less blowing up people's career foundations.
I remember when I was a kid, one of my family members got a piece of junk mail from ITT Tech. I thought it meant they were going to ITT Tech, and I was very proud of the idea that someone in my family was going to go to the college that they show on TV and make us rich. Actually, they were going to a community college. Which was better than going to ITT Tech.
Aftermath: The Department of Education would end up restricting ITT Tech’s access to student financial aid in 2016. They promptly filed for bankruptcy.3 In 2022, $3.9 billion in student debt was cancelled by the U.S. Government.4 ITT Tech was no longer the “education for the future”, but now a thing of the past.
Everest College calls you a lazy slob
Everest College decided to go the "get off the couch you slob and go to college" route. Several of their ads feature random people talking on the street, talking directly to you, dear viewer, watching syndicated programs on television. This one showed a guy standing in a parking lot (other ads show him talking on sidewalks in the street) talking about how you should go to college instead of talking on the phone all day (even funnier when you consider that this ad predates the smartphone revolution, created around 2006). Read the comments on this one. Most of them are people mentioning how they felt lazy as kids and teenagers. A small handful of them even mention being inspired to go to college, just not Everest.
Some people who have only seen this upload (a copy from the marketing company itself) have been confused by the lack of specific branding and phone number on this upload, especially since the ad encourages you to "Call Now!". The phone number appeared on these ads when they aired on TV, but was simply not included in this upload. If you ever take a look at As Seen On TV ads that are uploaded to YouTube by the ad company, the phone number and mailing address that appear at the end of those ads are usually not included in the upload.
For an example of what the phone number part would have looked like when it appeared on TV, here's another Everest College commercial that was clearly taken from an on-air recording:
Aftermath: Corinthian Colleges, the owner of Everest College, declared bankruptcy in both Canada and the United States in 2015. It was later determined that Everest's advertising during syndicated programs such as Jerry Springer and Maury was intentional and meant to target people who, among other things, were isolated and had "low self-esteem." 5
As for the guy in the commercial, he's given interviews online and acknowledged being known as the Everest College guy. He's also acknowledged the "bullshit, rip-off" nature of the college he once promoted on television. Most notably, he channeled his TV acting energy into a 2016 PSA encouraging people to vote in that year's election:
Education Connection throws out an absolute banger
This one is a bit of a cheat, because Education Connection is not a for-profit college. However, it's included here because this commercial has resurfaced as a meme in recent years due to its iconic status (and for another reason we'll get to later).
Set to a jingle by Anthony Falcone, our protagonist sings about how her bad grades in high school got her a bad job as a waitress. She decides to go to college to get a higher salary and uses Education Connection to find the right college. At the end of this commercial, she repeats "Get connected, for free! with Education Connection!" twice in a descending tone.
Education Connection has a number of similar commercials of people singing about how they need to find their online college to get more money. One of my favorites is this one, where a window washer is talking about the site to a younger woman outside her apartment window, and at the end he's inside her apartment dancing with her. To no one's surprise, many in the YouTube comments consider this to be stalker-like behavior:
As several people noted, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools around the world to adopt distance learning, the phrase "I'm taking my classes online, getting my degree on my own time!" ended up being the experience of many people in 2020. The difference between a 2020 student and the Education Connection girl is that most of these schools were not for profit.
Aftermath: Education Connection is still up and running to this day. This is where the other reason comes in. Education Connection is basically a website that promotes for-profit (or private non-profit) online colleges. Here is their disclaimer (note the naming of their parent company, EducationDynamics):
Anyone who uses Education Connection, after taking their free survey (the catch is that you provide some personal information about yourself), will be told that one of the colleges that pays EducationDynamics for sponsorship will contact (read: spam) you about applying to their college. I know this because I took the free Education Connection test using a fake information generator site. At the end, it just told me it had sent my information to Liberty University with no further action to take. I love Getting Connected!
Thank you for reading this far. Apologies for not having uploaded another Chatterbarks post for a few months. A combination of college work (don’t worry, a real college) and writer’s block kept me from even starting this one for a while.
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Boghani, Priyanka. “Another For-Profit College Chain Closes Its Doors.” FRONTLINE, PBS, 16 Sept. 2016, www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/another-for-profit-college-chain-closes-its-doors/.
Knowles, Jason, and Ann Pistone. “Westwood College Students Scrambling as For-Profit School Set to Shut Down.” ABC7 Chicago, 2 Feb. 2016, abc7chicago.com/for-profit-colleges-chicago-westwood-college-criminal-justice/1182499/.
ITT Technical Institute. Student FAQ. 10 Sept. 2016, web.archive.org/web/20160910220740/itt-tech.info/about/faq.
The Associated Press. “$3.9 Billion in Debt Is Canceled for Former Students of ITT Tech.” NPR, 16 Aug. 2022, www.npr.org/2022/08/16/1117715707/itt-tech-student-loan-debt-canceled.
Brinkerhoff, Noel. “Wells Fargo Main Investor in Nation’s Worst Private College Company.” AllGov California, 1 Jan. 2014, www.allgov.com/usa/ca/news/where-is-the-money-going/wells-fargo-main-investor-in-nations-worst-private-college-company-140101?news=852046.