Pro Publica sheds light on a particularly scummy practice all the rage on the Internet designed to sucker low-income single mothers: So-called "Obama mom" ads are springing up all over promising mothers that the president wants them to return to school so badly he's created special federal loans just for them. Just click right here, put in your information, and ... then get bombarded with pitches from for-profit schools and career colleges only to learn that the Obama mom loans don't exist.
The misleading ads don't come from the schools themselves (some of the biggest for-profit schools are the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University) but from operations that get paid to generate leads for the schools. Pro Publica talks to consumer advocates who see alarming similarities between these pitches and those used to lure low-income people into subprime loans. In fact, one company uses the same image of a dancing blonde on separate ads, one for schools and the other for housing loans.
(More for-profit colleges stories.)
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