ECMC to Close Its 3 Altierus Career College Campuses
Inside Higher Ed
Doug Lederman
April 26, 2022
ECMC Group, the student loan guarantee agency turned nonprofit education services company, has quietly announced that it would close the three remaining campuses of the former Corinthian Colleges for-profit chain it purchased in 2015.
Altierus Career College, as the former Corinthian campuses are known, “will engage in an orderly closure, with campuses remaining open until all current students that are following their academic plans graduate or an acceptable completion plan is identified for remaining degree students,” ECMC said in a five-sentence notice on its website.
ECMC is among the former student loan guarantors that have made the transition from lenders to philanthropic (or at least quasi-philanthropic) nonprofit organizations that make grants, provide education services and sometimes invest in companies designed to help students and institutions that serve them. It focuses on career and technical education, student transfer, and other issues. (Note: This paragraph has been updated to clarify that ECMC has always been nonprofit.)
ECMC made an unusual move in 2015 by creating Zenith Education to try to create a path forward for 56 Everest and WyoTech campuses and online programs that had been part of Corinthian, which crumbled under regulatory scrutiny from the Obama administration’s Education Department and severe enrollment losses. ECMC spent hundreds of millions of dollars but closed all but three of the campuses in 2017.
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