Post by robeiae on Apr 14, 2017 11:22:53 GMT -5
...I give you FTSU (Forest Trail Sports University,) a "for profit" school (I'm not sure it actually qualifies as a school) that went belly-up at the end of last year.
As the name suggests, it's curriculum was sports-centric. It had no academics on campus at all; "students" apparently took some online courses, but that's about it. Tuition was around $33,000 a year. The owners targeted high schoolers who were not offered athletic scholarships to college or minor league contracts, but who imagined--sometimes with the help of their parents--that they still had a future in pro sports.
Here's the story: www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/19136428/the-downfall-america-first-sport-only-college
Some highlights (read the whole thing):
Here's the school's website from August of last year: web.archive.org/web/20160809230216/http://www.foresttrailsportsuniversity.com/?
As the name suggests, it's curriculum was sports-centric. It had no academics on campus at all; "students" apparently took some online courses, but that's about it. Tuition was around $33,000 a year. The owners targeted high schoolers who were not offered athletic scholarships to college or minor league contracts, but who imagined--sometimes with the help of their parents--that they still had a future in pro sports.
Here's the story: www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/19136428/the-downfall-america-first-sport-only-college
Some highlights (read the whole thing):
Arriving last August at the for-profit program, which charged a tuition of nearly $33,000, they were consigned to an old hotel, without adequate facilities, staff or supervision, on a campus where the threat of violence turned out to be more common than classes...
Forest Trail's deal with Barber-Scotia also fell through, and just before students were due to arrive, the program moved 65 miles to the north. FTSU would share space with the Forest Trail prep academy, home of Delaney Rudd's basketball program. Rather than living in the Barber-Scotia dorms and playing on its fields, athletes would occupy a desolate stretch on the industrial side of Kernersville. They would move into the Phoenix, a recently closed hotel near the academy and its gym...
Students say the food was even worse. In both quantity and quality, meals such as single servings of Pop-Tarts for breakfast or microwavable corn dogs for dinner failed to meet the needs of growing athletes. "I was disappointed because I like to eat a lot," Cecil says. "I was just going with it because I was there to play baseball, but over time it got really bad. One day, I went into breakfast and I grabbed one of my Pop-Tarts, and I also tried to grab a small package of muffins. And the guy who worked there yelled at me and took the package out of my hands. He made me apologize for taking the muffins"...
In September, an infection hit Forest Trail and spread quickly through the baseball squad, like croup among prison inmates. Over two weeks of coughing and vomiting, Roets shed 8 pounds, Chaplin lost 10, Cecil dropped 12. Some of their teammates even wound up in the hospital, according to their coach. "We had 40 baseball players, and four would come out to practice, because everyone else was severely sick," says Eidschun, who also came down with the bug. "I think when you get that many people spending so much time in those rooms that were so small, and not being provided the things they needed, that's what happened."
But, contradicting public declarations by Gifty Chung that "safety is a concern" and FTSU would hire "superb" athletic trainers, students allege that Forest Trail devoted very few resources to medical or orthopedic care. Students say they couldn't find trainers. Some had to contend with coaches who were leaving and getting replaced and who had little understanding of their personal profiles...
In her statement, Gifty Chung [the owner of this enterprise] compressed the timeline of Forest Trail's downfall and blamed the athletes: "When online courses through Barber-Scotia College and other schools fell through, we realized that the college program was no longer viable. Meanwhile, the students had caused severe damage to school property. With student fees not forthcoming, we were forced to begin a process to evict these athletes from the residence halls. In an effort to resolve this experimental program in good faith, we returned all the money that had been paid to FTSU and entered into confidential settlements with the athletes' families."
Forest Trail's deal with Barber-Scotia also fell through, and just before students were due to arrive, the program moved 65 miles to the north. FTSU would share space with the Forest Trail prep academy, home of Delaney Rudd's basketball program. Rather than living in the Barber-Scotia dorms and playing on its fields, athletes would occupy a desolate stretch on the industrial side of Kernersville. They would move into the Phoenix, a recently closed hotel near the academy and its gym...
Students say the food was even worse. In both quantity and quality, meals such as single servings of Pop-Tarts for breakfast or microwavable corn dogs for dinner failed to meet the needs of growing athletes. "I was disappointed because I like to eat a lot," Cecil says. "I was just going with it because I was there to play baseball, but over time it got really bad. One day, I went into breakfast and I grabbed one of my Pop-Tarts, and I also tried to grab a small package of muffins. And the guy who worked there yelled at me and took the package out of my hands. He made me apologize for taking the muffins"...
In September, an infection hit Forest Trail and spread quickly through the baseball squad, like croup among prison inmates. Over two weeks of coughing and vomiting, Roets shed 8 pounds, Chaplin lost 10, Cecil dropped 12. Some of their teammates even wound up in the hospital, according to their coach. "We had 40 baseball players, and four would come out to practice, because everyone else was severely sick," says Eidschun, who also came down with the bug. "I think when you get that many people spending so much time in those rooms that were so small, and not being provided the things they needed, that's what happened."
But, contradicting public declarations by Gifty Chung that "safety is a concern" and FTSU would hire "superb" athletic trainers, students allege that Forest Trail devoted very few resources to medical or orthopedic care. Students say they couldn't find trainers. Some had to contend with coaches who were leaving and getting replaced and who had little understanding of their personal profiles...
In her statement, Gifty Chung [the owner of this enterprise] compressed the timeline of Forest Trail's downfall and blamed the athletes: "When online courses through Barber-Scotia College and other schools fell through, we realized that the college program was no longer viable. Meanwhile, the students had caused severe damage to school property. With student fees not forthcoming, we were forced to begin a process to evict these athletes from the residence halls. In an effort to resolve this experimental program in good faith, we returned all the money that had been paid to FTSU and entered into confidential settlements with the athletes' families."