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Post date: Sep 08, 2011 1:36:10 PM
Last year, James Soloway called hundreds of prospective students per day on behalf of a company that placed advertisements on Google and Bing. The ads promised to help students contact the admissions offices of public colleges if they filled out an online form and included their phone number.
He told the students who responded that they would hear from their preferred public college, even though they almost never did. In the meantime, he said, they should consider attending a for-profit college—such as Kaplan University, Grand Canyon University, or the University of Phoenix.
Most of the prospective students were confused. Some hung up. But sometimes, the pitch worked, he says. Some people, especially high-school students, believed he was an educational counselor and gave weight to his recommendations, he says.
The entire process was designed to redirect students who wanted information on a public college to a for-profit college, Mr. Soloway says. “The expectation was that we were not to allow a call to end with a student until we had created three private-school leads.”
The account offers new details about the practices of lead-generation companies that place misleading search ads to lure prospective students.
September 7, 2011, 1:13 pm
By Josh Keller
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