The Sunday NY Times has a lengthy article about Bill Weld and the collapse of Decker College, the vocational institution of which Weld was CEO (with a $700,000 salary) just before it went bankrupt, stranding nearly 4,000 students.
One particularly excellent quote:
Many former employees and students said that an aggressive sales pitch was part of the mix from the start, especially in the admissions department, down the hall from Mr. Weld’s office at Decker headquarters east of Louisville. That was a raucous call center where 100 telemarketers phoned prospective students. Many operators were former bill collectors or car salesmen. “The idea was, do anything you could to get students into classes, so we could draw federal funds on them,” said Sherrie Moore, a former payroll supervisor at Decker…. Decker occasionally fired telemarketers for “missing numbers.”
And another:
To maintain truant students’ loan eligibility, Mr. Urquilla said the instructors told him, the Atlanta campus director had ordered them to falsify attendance and coursework records. “I knew that was flat-out illegal,” Mr. Urquilla said. When Mr. Urquilla reported these problems to Decker’s provost and general counsel in Louisville, he said, they responded by telling him to obtain from all Atlanta instructors a signed agreement barring them from criticizing the college. Mr. Urquilla refused, he said.
And here’s another:
Mr. Weld left the Louisville headquarters in August, though he continued as the school’s chief executive through October. His departure provoked bitterness among some employees, especially because he delegated to subordinates the task of meeting with hundreds of disgruntled workers on Sept. 6 to announce their dismissal. Employees are owed $1.4 million, according to documents filed in bankruptcy court here.
Sherry French, a former senior accountant, said she worked without pay in the days after her layoff to shut down Decker headquarters, and helped box up Mr. Weld’s personal effects. “What we saw was that he threw up his hands, said, ‘I’m running for governor,’ and vanished,” Ms. French said.
Weld’s campaign for Governor of New York is so totally dead. Still, check out his new spiffy web site!
Please share widely!
