Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan is making preparations to sue the for-profit Westwood College. The college has four Chicago area campuses. The lawsuit claims that institutions like Westwood College gives students that are enrolled in its criminal justice program false hope and high student loan debt.

Westwood College, a career college owned by Alta College in Denver, Colo. is one of the several for-profit universities to come under fire by regulators and consumer advocates. Among the complaints are poor jobplacement rates, aggressive sales tactics, low graduation rates, excessive profit margins and the leaving students to foot the bill often from taxpayer-backed loans on which students default.

“Many Illinois students who tried to better themselves through a criminal justice education at Westwood now find themselves saddled with more than $50,000 in student loans, and no way to pursue a law enforcement job because their Westwood education was not regionally accredited and therefore was not recognized by other regionally accredited colleges or law enforcement employers,” stated the attorney general’s office said in the draft of the lawsuit.

Westwood College also released a statement stating, “We continue to cooperate with the Illinois (attorney general) to resolve any outstanding issues. We are proud of our legacy of helping students obtain their educational goals. We have hundreds of graduates working in the private and public criminal justice field throughout the state of Illinois.”

However for-profit institutions choose to defend themselves, there are former employees ready to speak out against them.

“As a former employee of two for-profit colleges, I know the tricks of the trade that are used on unsuspecting students,” a financial aid administrator, who preferred to remain anonymous, said. “We held meetings and training classes telling us how to dupe people. We were threatened daily if we didn’t make our numbers.”

The administrator claimed that there were many unethical and subversive tactics used while she was working at the ITT Technical Institute in Bessemer, Ala. She quit there in November 2011. The administrator, who has two Master’s degrees and is currently working on her doctorate, claimed to have worked at the following schools: Virginia College Online, University of Alabama, Lagrange College and Columbus State University.

“Get the signatures on loan papers at all costs’ was the mantra of management. And if all else failed, fraud was often employed to get and keep federal money rolling in. We ...