MILWAUKEE — For-profit colleges account for 10% of all student enrollments, but they account for half of all student loan defaults, according to The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. 

What’s more is that Black and Latino students make up at least half of the students who attend these institutions.

Sanford Brown is known by many in the education sector as one of the most notoriously fraudulent for-profit colleges. It shares that title with ITT Technical College and Everest College, all of which have closed.

All three had campuses in Wisconsin. Everest had one in Milwaukee. Sanford Brown had one in West Allis. ITT Tech had three campuses in the state: Madison, Greenfield and Green Bay.

Some students who did not cap out on federal financial aid at these fraudulent colleges could afford to go back to school — others were not as fortunate. 

Damia Causey said she’s grateful she does not fall into the latter category. Still, she never expected to be in college again this late in life.

“I knew I always wanted to be a nurse,” she said. “I thought Sanford Brown would be a good stair step because I could get my degree as a medical assistant and make more money than CNAs were making at that time.”

Like many young, single moms of color who lived in low-income neighborhoods, Causey wanted a better life for herself and for her three young daughters. She was working a third-shift job when she applied to go to Sanford Brown.

“I looked up their schedule, and they had block times, which made it possible for me as a single parent to still maintain employment and go to school,” she said. “I was working from 11 at night to six or seven in the morning.”

Causey made good on her word and made it work. 

“I didn’t have a car at the time either,” she noted. “I was catching a bus to school and then two buses back.” 

It was far from an easy experience. She would be awake for days, trying to balance her family life, school, and an overnight job. She was so exhausted that at times, she would fall asleep on the bus.

One day, it put her in the hospital. 

“I had been up for two and a half days with no sleep, my blood pressure was extremely high and I ended up in the emergency room,” she recalled. “They told me that all of the stuff I was doing was too much and I needed to be removed from my source of stress, so I ended up staying in the hospital for eight days.”

Despite all of that, she graduated with a degree as a medical assistant 14 years ago from Sanford Brown. She moved to North Carolina to start fresh, hoping for a new beginning for herself and her kids.

“I didn’t realize Sanford Brown was problematic until I moved to another state,” she said. “When I started filling out all these job applications, I had employers tell me they did not hire people who went to that school.”

The more applications she filled out, the worse it got. Causey said she filled out more than 400 of them.

“There were applications that I filled out where one of the questions was where you attended school and if you put that you went to Sanford Brown, the application literally shut off,” she said. “All of my sacrifices were for nothing.”

Causey had no choice but to come back to Milwaukee. She moved back with her children in Sept. 2010 and began working odd jobs to pay the bills. She was angry.

And some days, she still is.

“I believed that this school was legit because my federal student loans were accepted,” she said. “Sanford Brown left me with $51,000 worth of debt. Currently, my debt — and I’m not done with school — stands at $82,000 because I checked the other day.”

In 2020, Causey decided to start over. She is now pursuing a nursing degree at Milwaukee Area Technical College, which is where the remainder of her debt is coming from. 

Sanford Brown’s West Allis campus closed in 2013. All of its campuses closed in the spring of 2015, mainly due to its extremely low job placement rate, which is a common theme among fraudulent for-profit colleges.         

“It was all smoke and mirrors, to be honest,” Causey said, as she showed the dozens of emails she sent to Sanford Brown leadership all those years ago. “Things did ultimately end up working out.”    

Causey said this unexpected detour in life proved to be a learning opportunity. She had advice for others in her same situation.

“I would suggest that people do thorough research, but don’t be discouraged,” she said. “I would tell people they should definitely go back if that’s what their dream is.”

There are currently 89 Education Approval Program-approved, for-profit colleges in the state of Wisconsin. Eighty-four of those schools are active. Sanford Brown’s West Allis campus was first approved in Feb. 2005 and terminated in Nov. 2013.