Westwood College — It Sold a Police Career Its Degree Couldn’t Deliver

Summary

Westwood College was a for-profit chain that began in Denver in 1953 as the Denver Institute of Technology, a legitimate trade school, and ended in March 2016 as a cautionary tale about a degree that promised a career it could not provide. Renamed Westwood in 1997 and operated by the privately held Alta Colleges, it grew to about 15 campuses across five states plus a large online division, teaching criminal justice, graphic design, business, and technology to working adults. It stopped enrolling new students in November 2015 and closed for good a few months later, one more casualty of the for-profit reckoning of the mid-2010s.

What set Westwood apart was the specific, documented nature of its deception. Its marquee program was criminal justice, sold with the implication that graduates could become police officers. The problem was concrete and disqualifying: the degree did not carry the accreditation that many police departments required, so students who completed it — and took on substantial debt to do so — frequently could not get the very jobs the recruiting had implied. The school also pushed students into a high-cost institutional financing program, sometimes at interest rates near 18 percent.

State attorneys general moved against it. Colorado settled with Westwood in 2012 over deceptive-trade-practices and lending-law violations, extracting penalties and direct restitution to students. Illinois sued the same year, alleging the criminal-justice program misled students about job prospects and the program's true cost; Westwood settled in 2015, agreeing to put 15 million dollars toward those students' loans. By then the federal regulatory climate had tightened around for-profits, enrollment was collapsing, and Westwood chose to stop enrolling rather than continue.

The closure stranded a final cohort of students, but Westwood's larger legacy played out afterward. In 2021 the federal government began discharging the loans of former Westwood students, crediting state attorneys general for the evidence, and in August 2022 it cancelled roughly 1.5 billion dollars for about 79,000 borrowers who had attended between 2002 and 2015 — a mass discharge built on the finding that Westwood had routinely misled the people it enrolled.

Timeline

1953

Founded

The Denver Institute of Technology opens in Denver, a for-profit trade school offering technical diplomas and degrees.

1997

Rebranded

As it expands into new fields and locations, the school is renamed Westwood College, operated by the privately held Alta Colleges.

2000s

The chain

Westwood grows to roughly 15 campuses across five states plus a substantial online division, marketing criminal justice, design, business, and technology programs.

2009

Federal settlement

Westwood settles a federal case for about 7 million dollars over misrepresenting its graduation statistics, without admitting wrongdoing.

2012

Colorado settles

The Colorado Attorney General settles deceptive-trade-practices and lending claims; Westwood pays roughly 2 million dollars in penalties and 2.5 million dollars in restitution to students.

Jan. 18, 2012

Illinois sues

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan files suit alleging the criminal-justice program misled students about jobs and the program's true cost, including high-interest institutional loans.

2015

Illinois settles

Westwood settles the Illinois case, agreeing to direct 15 million dollars toward the loans of its criminal-justice students.

Nov. 12, 2015

Enrollment stops

Westwood suspends all new enrollment, citing poor enrollment and tightening government regulation.

Jan. 25, 2016

Closure announced

Westwood emails current and former students that it will close after the January 2016 term concludes.

March 2016

Closed

Westwood shuts all of its campuses, ending operations after 63 years.

July 9, 2021

First discharges

The U.S. Department of Education forgives loans for an initial group of former Westwood students, crediting the Colorado AG's evidence and group application.

Aug. 30, 2022

Mass discharge

The Department cancels about 1.5 billion dollars in loans for roughly 79,000 borrowers who attended Westwood between 2002 and 2015, finding it routinely misled students.

A Trade School That Grew Teeth

Westwood started honestly enough. As the Denver Institute of Technology, founded in 1953, it was the kind of vocational school the postwar economy ran on — practical training in technical trades, a credential and a job. That part of its history is unremarkable in the best sense. The turn came with the renaming to Westwood College in 1997 and the chain-building that followed under Alta Colleges, when a single trade school became a multi-state, multi-program for-profit enterprise selling degrees across five states and online.

The economics were the economics of the whole sector. Westwood charged for-profit tuition, drew heavily on federal student aid, and grew by recruiting working adults and career-changers — people who wanted a credible path into a stable profession and lacked the time or money for a traditional university. The flagship pitch was criminal justice. To a prospective student imagining a career in law enforcement, a "criminal justice degree" from an accredited-looking college sounds like exactly the right step. That intuition was the product, and Westwood sold it hard.

The intuition was wrong in a way the student had no easy means to detect. A degree is only as useful as the doors it opens, and the value of Westwood's criminal-justice credential depended entirely on whether the agencies that hire police officers would accept it. Many would not — and that single fact, buried beneath the marketing, is the whole story.

The Degree That Wasn't a Key

The deception at the center of Westwood was unusually specific, which is part of why regulators could pin it down. Westwood's criminal-justice program lacked the accreditation that numerous police departments and law-enforcement agencies required of their applicants' education. A student could enroll, complete the coursework, graduate, take on years of debt — and then discover that the very departments the program had implied she was preparing for would not recognize the degree. The credential was not a key to the career; it was a bill for a door that stayed locked.

The financial side compounded the harm. Federal aid did not cover Westwood's full tuition, so the school steered students into its own institutional financing, sometimes at interest rates approaching 18 percent — far above the federal loans available to the same students. The structure rhymes with Corinthian's Genesis program and ITT's PEAKS loans: a high-cost, in-house debt product bridging a tuition gap the school itself had set, loaded onto borrowers least able to carry it. The Illinois Attorney General, suing in 2012, named both halves of the scheme — the misleading job promise and the punishing financing — and the Colorado settlement of the same year covered the deceptive-practices and lending violations on its side of the state line.

The students were not careless. They were people who had been told by an institution bearing the word "College" that this degree was the route to a uniform and a badge, and who had no realistic way to verify the accreditation fine print that quietly disqualified them. They enrolled because they trusted the premise. The premise had been built to be trusted and engineered to mislead.

The States Closed the Door

Westwood's end came not from a single dramatic cutoff but from a tightening vise of state litigation and federal regulation that made the model untenable. The Colorado settlement in 2012 cost the company penalties and direct restitution to students. The Illinois suit, filed the same year, ground forward until Westwood settled in 2015 and agreed to put 15 million dollars toward its criminal-justice students' loans. These were not the only actions — an earlier federal settlement in 2009 had already addressed misrepresented graduation statistics — and together they signaled that the way Westwood made money was increasingly illegal.

Meanwhile the broader environment turned hostile to the entire for-profit sector. New federal "gainful employment" scrutiny pressed schools to show that their graduates actually earned enough to repay their debt — a test Westwood's outcomes were poorly positioned to pass — and enrollment across the sector was falling as the fraud cases mounted and prospective students grew wary. In November 2015 Westwood suspended new enrollment, citing precisely those pressures, and in January 2016 it told its students the college would close after the term. By March 2016 the campuses were dark.

The closure stranded a final cohort, denied the orderly completion a teach-out provides. But Westwood was unusual among these collapses in that the decisive damage had been documented for years in court before the doors shut — the misleading promise and the abusive financing were on the record, named by two state attorneys general. That record became the foundation for everything that followed.

The Five Factors

01

A degree is worth only the doors it opens

Westwood's criminal-justice program lacked the accreditation many police agencies required, which meant the credential could not deliver the career it implied. The deception was not in the diploma but in the unspoken gap between what graduation suggested and what employers would actually accept — a gap the student had no easy way to see.

02

Marketing an aspiration is the perfect cover for a worthless product

Selling "become a police officer" works because the student is buying a future she cannot yet evaluate. When the pitch is an aspiration rather than a verifiable outcome, the school can charge premium tuition for a credential that fails precisely where it counts, and the failure surfaces only after the debt is signed.

03

High-cost in-house financing is a predatory tell, not a convenience

Westwood pushed students into institutional loans at rates near 18 percent to bridge a tuition gap it had set itself — the same pattern as Corinthian's Genesis and ITT's PEAKS programs. A school that finances its own price at punitive rates has revealed that the price was never aligned with the value.

04

State attorneys general can do what a captured federal system won't

Colorado and Illinois built the case against Westwood years before federal relief arrived, and their evidence later anchored the loan discharges. When federal oversight is slow or weak, state consumer-protection law is the front line, and the record it builds becomes the instrument of eventual remedy.

05

Regulation can end a school by making its model unprofitable

Westwood was not switched off by an aid ban; it chose to stop enrolling as litigation and gainful-employment scrutiny made its business untenable. A determined regulatory regime can dismantle a predatory chain not with one blow but by steadily removing the conditions under which deception pays.

Aftermath

The closure in March 2016 stranded Westwood's last students without a teach-out, the standard final injury of the for-profit collapse. But because the deception had been litigated for years, Westwood's former students became strong candidates for the borrower-defense relief that Corinthian's students had pioneered. Relief came in stages. In July 2021 the U.S. Department of Education forgave the loans of an initial group, explicitly crediting the Colorado Attorney General's evidence and the group application the state had filed. Then, in August 2022, the Department went broad: it discharged roughly 1.5 billion dollars in federal loans for about 79,000 borrowers who had attended any Westwood location, including online, between 2002 and 2015 — automatically, without requiring applications — on the finding that Westwood had routinely and substantially misled them about their credentials' value, the criminal-justice-to-police-job promise foremost among them.

Alta Colleges, the private operator, faced no comparable public reckoning of its own, and the campuses were repurposed into other uses. What survives is the documented mechanism — a degree sold as a key that did not fit the lock — and the role of state attorneys general in proving it, whose casework turned a closed chain's deception into more than a billion dollars of cancelled debt and a template for holding the next one to account.

Lessons

A vocational degree is worth exactly the doors it opens; a program that implies a licensed or credentialed career must hold the accreditation that the relevant employers and licensing bodies actually require, or it is selling a key that does not fit.
Aspirational marketing — "become a police officer," "launch a creative career" — is the easiest fraud to commit and the hardest for a student to check; require schools to disclose, in plain terms, whether their credential meets the specific employment or licensure standard being implied.
High-cost in-house financing at rates far above federal loans is a red flag in any for-profit program; when a school finances the tuition gap it set itself at punitive interest, the price was never aligned with the value.
State attorneys general are an indispensable front line where federal oversight lags; the Colorado and Illinois cases against Westwood built the factual record that later justified more than a billion dollars in federal loan discharges.
For students aiming at a licensed profession, verify directly with the hiring agencies or licensing board whether a school's specific credential qualifies — before enrolling and before borrowing — because the institution selling the dream has every incentive not to volunteer the disqualifying detail.