Dive Brief:

• Student and consumer advocacy groups are criticizing the proposed $24 million purchase of 56 Corinthian Colleges campuses by the nonprofit ECMC Group, Inside Higher Ed reports.
• The sale, announced Thursday, pending regulatory approvals, includes more than half of the for-profit company’s assets and enrollment, or more than 39,000 students.
• The critics say they’re concerned about ECMC’s absence of experience in operating colleges and its controversial track record in the student loan servicing business, where it has engaged in collection practices described by the New York Times as “ruthless.”

Dive Insight:

ECMC’s core business, Educational Credit Management Corp., is managing $39 million worth of federal student loans. Another concern raised by critics is a conflict of interest where ECMC would be operating colleges that disperse federal loans to students while profiting, through another subsidiary, when students default on those loans. Higher Ed Not Debt, a coalition of groups concerned about student loan issues, says that all students at Corinthian colleges involved in the sale should be allowed to opt-out of the sale, if they choose, with a full tuition and fees refund and discharges for federal and private college loans. ECMC says it will grant new students in 53 of the colleges in the deal a 20% reduction in their tuition. Also, Corinthian will forgive all of its private student loan debt for students involved in the deal — worth a total of $4 million.