Big, pious apple at the rotten orchard

     Looks like the king of for-profits is claiming that it will be good from now on:

A New Leaf at Phoenix? (Inside Higher Ed)

    When it comes to marketing and recruiting, the University of Phoenix is turning over a new leaf, or so its executives said at a briefing here Monday.
    “We’re doing what we think is right,” said Gregory W. Cappelli, the co-chief executive officer of Apollo Group, which owns Phoenix and other for-profit colleges and schools. The company, he said, is shifting “from a recruiting mentality and culture into one of a long-term relationship” between potential students and recruiters, who’ve been renamed "counselors.”
    The briefing was framed as a discussion about Apollo’s position paper,“Higher Education at a Crossroads,” which touts the for-profit sector as playing an essential role in President Obama’s access and completion goals. But the scrutiny facing the sector, and Apollo’s attempts to push back, dominated the hour or so that Capelli, his co-CEO Chas Edelstein and Joseph L. D’Amico, president and chief operating officer – along with a cache of public relations people – spent with a few reporters.
    In the debate over the role of for-profit higher education, where the good apples/bad apples dichotomy has come to dominate discussion (though some Congressional Democrats have said they see something resembling a rotten orchard), Apollo is actively working to brand itself as an organization chastened and determined to do better, especially after being identified in the Government Accountability Office's "secret shopper" investigation of recruiting practices.
. . .
    In September, Phoenix will stop compensating recruiters based on the number of students they enroll and whether those numbers are on an upward trajectory, criteria that accounted for 32 percent of their evaluations. Instead, performance will be judged entirely on factors such as teamwork and attitude when interacting with students.
    “The purpose of marketing is to inform,” Cappelli said. Edelstein chimed in: “We feel there is an imperative … [in] reaching as many as we can who can benefit” from higher education.
. . .
    Though the executives wouldn’t say quite say that they were trying to frame the company as the good in a sea of bad, that was very much the subtext of what Edelstein and other Apollo executives told a small group of reporters. Going forward, Apollo seemed to be pledging, we’re going to do our best to be honest with you, our students, Congress, everyone. “Transparency is very important,” Edelstein said. “We’re trying to lead the industry.”….