Talk:University of the Potomac

Hi, firstly thank you for taking the time to monitor and contribute to Potomac College's entry with me. There has been debate surrounding whether or not to include Potomac's best practices as reported by the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

I believe it is necessary to include what Potomac was praised for in addition to what they were reprimanded for. To only focus on one aspect of the findings is not neutral. I understand that at least one user believes the current phrasing of Potomac's best practices reads like marketing copy. By no means do I want to post marketing copy. Can you please help me revise the Admissions and Financial Aid section so that it reflects both the positive and negative findings of the committee without reading like marketing? I want to make sure that this entry paints an accurate portrait of Potomac College.

Thanks!

Mr Heyde (talk) 18:01, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello Mr. Heyde. You should try to include only those items that are notable specifically to Potomac College. The GAO investigation received a lot of press, and very little of it talked about best practices. I think that is accurately reflected in this article as it is. Here are the best practices you wanted to include:

   * An undercover investigator, posing as a prospective student, was coached to carefully consider the implications of taking out a college loan.
   * An undercover investigator, posing as a prospective student, was urged to only take a loan that could be responsibly managed.
   * Transparency regarding the potential to transfer credits from other institutions of higher learning to Potomac.
   * Offering competitive tuition rates comparable to public schools of higher education in the Washington DC.
   * Offering tuition rates that are significantly more affordable than private schools in the DC area.

None of these are notable, unusual things. These are things a financial aid counselor are expected to do, that's why they don't make sense in Wikipedia. Instead we tried to include only those items (like fraud) that are unusual for financial aid counselors to commit. Since this fraud happened at Potomac College, we included it to the extent it occurred. Is it possible you might have a conflict of interest in editing this article? If so, try to make small changes and post any large changes you would like to make on this talk page. That will give everyone a chance to review your edits and to make sure a potential conflict of interest doesn't interfere with your editing. See you around. JamaUtil (talk) 02:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi JamaUtil. First my apologies for not marking the small changes I just made. They are as follows: Added Potomac's motto and that they have an online campus Added Potomac's response to probation with neutral wording Added a line clarifying the current locations of active campuses Clarified what caused Potomac to be cited for deceptive practices.

All information is accurate and I am striving to remian neutral.

I want to discuss returning Potomac's best practices. These best practices were cited on record by investigators during the investigation as standing out from other for-profit schools. If the article reports the fact that Potomac was cited for deceptive claims, in order to maintain neutrality, it should report the fact that Potomac was also cited for best practices amongst for profit colleges. This, just like accusations of fraud, stands out amongst other for profit institutions and is important information. Before reposting I want to hear your thoughts. I will not repost claims of best practices until I can find citation/verification.

I also believe that this article should list the courses offered at Potomac. This is factual, neutral, and verifiable information that should be available to readers. Why do you think it should not be listed? Again, I am waiting to hear your thoughts before making these bigger changes.

Thanks. Mr Heyde (talk) 16:33, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Mr. Heyde, if you can find the on-record statements investigators made about Potomac's best practices, that would be a good thing to post. Just enclose your source in <ref></ref> tags. I wanted to let you know why I took out this statement:

The issue arose when an undercover investigator challenged statistics in one of Potomac's brochures. The brochure cited information published by the Department of Labor regarding the difference in salaries of people with a higher education versus those without. Potomac promptly ceased distributing these brochures.

If you found this out via some other source, you should include the source. If however it was something that was just told to you, I thought you should see the GAO Report (look at page 21). That interesting information suggests that Potomac College is the DC school that had seven instances of questionable practices, so I don't think they can be tied to just one source.

Finally, good question about the course offerings. The most detailed Wikipedia usually gets into a school's academic offerings is to list individual colleges of the school, see an article like University of Maryland, Baltimore County. If a school has a lot of famous professors in a program, or if newspaper articles (or blogs) have talked about the program, then it's a good thing to post. You should always include a source that shows how well known the program is. JamaUtil (talk) 19:36, 4 November 2010 (UTC)