As Education Management Corp. prepares to sell the Art Institutes and its other schools to the Dream Center Foundation, the tarnished Pittsburgh for-profit education company is promising students and faculty a fresh start.
EDMC is telling regulators that the Dream Center, a charitable, mission-focused nonprofit based in Los Angeles, will have students’ best interests at heart — not come in as investors whose only concern is a return on their money.
But as some accreditation agencies reviewed the proposed $60 million deal behind closed doors last week, opponents are building their case in public that those involved in the deal have plenty at stake in the profit-seeking education industry.
Dream Center’s ties to longtime for-profit education investors have raised questions about whether it is possible for problems that undermined EDMC’s schools in recent years — predatory recruiting practices that saddled students with debt — to be cured under the ownership of the nonprofit that has no experience running higher education institutions.
The unusual and complex nature of the sale — a for-profit owner sending roughly 60,000 students and 15,000 employees to a nonprofit owner — has brought attention to what is normally an esoteric and routine approval process.