The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "colleges" ...
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Indentured Students
In a year-long series, Bloomberg detailed how the $1 trillion in outstanding student loans has imprisoned borrowers in a lifetime of debt, enabling a host of predatory collections practices, misleading financial-aid offers and out-of-control college spending -- while politicians for decades ignored mounting danger signals.
Tags: Student loans; debts; financial aids; college expenses; politicians
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For-Profit-College Business Model Breeds Exploitative Marketing Tactics
In the first radio piece: Interviews with former recruiters, faculty, administrators and students of a small group of for-profit colleges in Minnesota paint a picture of schools that are exploiting unsophisticated students for their financial-aid money. Analysis points to a high-enrollment, high-dropout business model that earns the company millions but provides questionable return on taxpayer investment. In the second radio piece: Political differences at the federal level make it unclear how much the government will regulate for-profit colleges. At the Minnesota state level, the leading official for higher-ed says his agency doesn’t have the resources to go after problem colleges – and isn’t sure whether beefing up enforcement would be the best use of higher-education funding.
Tags: Non-profit colleges; financial aid; business models; for-profit colleges
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World’s Untold Stories: Secrets of the Belfast Project
Forty years ago, during the height of Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence known as "The Troubles," a widowed mother with 10 children disappeared. Today, the answers to what happened could be found in audio recordings locked away in a U.S. college archive. But some don’t want the truth to come out. The audio recordings were collected for the Boston College Oral History Archives, from members of groups on both sides of the fighting. But this history project may contain evidence, that could threaten a delicate peace agreement – and the man credited with helping bring that peace to Northern Ireland, Gerry Adams. Adams, a prominent Irish politician and alleged former head of the Irish Republican Army, has vigorously denied the allegations. But many think the tapes could hold the key to solving the widowed mother’s murder – and more. In this episode of CNN’s documentary series “World’s Untold Stories”, Nic Robertson examines the risks and the benefits of exposing what truths may be on the tapes – and explains the ongoing battle between families, politicians, the courts, and academia, who are either seeking the truth, or seeking to protect it.
Tags: Northern Ireland; Boston College; Gerry Adams; politicians; courts; academia
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HBO: NCAA Head Games
Five years into football’s concussions crisis, one group of athletes may be in more danger than any other: college football players. That’s because while leagues from the NFL down to Pop Warner have sharply reduced contact in practice to limit the amount of hits to the head, the NCAA has yet to mandate any rules. A six-month Real Sports investigation found that, over the course of a year, the average college football player is exposed to 70% more hits to the head than an NFL player. All these hits can add up and make it harder for the brain to function and do the work of being a student. In other words, young men going to college purportedly to improve their minds are often doing precisely the opposite—they are damaging them. Once these athletes leave college they’re on their own to deal with the potential consequences. The NFL provides long-term medical care for its football players. The NCAA does not.
Tags: broadcast; college football; athletes; concussions; health; NFL; NCAA; medical care
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The Columbus Dispatch: Credit Scars
The Dispatch documented the plight of thousands who, through no fault of their own, have been denied the chance to buy a home or a car, take out a loan for college, rent an apartment, land a job, join the Armed Forces, receive medical care or even open a checking account.
Tags: Credit cards; credit reports; checking accounts; banks
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Bales: Army suspect in Afghan shooting was liable in financial fraud
On the day that tips arose about a U.S. soldier who may have strafed two Afghan villages, I left the office for a flight to Tacoma. Within 48 hours of the soldier’s being identified as Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, I and two colleagues broke the news that the emerging hagiography of Bales drafted by family and attorneys had more to it than the story of a soldier who enlisted at the ripe of 27 driven by outrage over the 2001 terrorist attacks—and then broken down by an unrelenting cycle of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Our story started with pure spidey senses: Bales’ s family and lawyer said he had left a stockbroker’s career to enlist, as they explained his call to serve. Yet he had not finished college and clearly had financial troubles, I had determined. And he was active in brokerage in the late 1990s in Florida I learned by checking assorted online records—which raised my suspicions about the quick-money penny stock trading that was commonplace then. Based on those instincts, while also doing the running daily story from Bales’ Army base in Washington state, I had checked some online brokerage records and enlisted Julie Tate to look at others and run through civil and criminal filings in Ohio (Bales’s home state and then nationally). Within an hour, I had found one suspicious record and Julie had found others and we were off on a 30-hour run of investigative reporting and boots on the ground interviews that yielded the breaking news of Bales’s more complicated—and less laudatory—past in the period just before he joined the Army. We located and I interviewed an elderly couple who had lost substantial savings in accounts managed by Bales and received copies of detailed financial records that corroborated their claims and showed Bales as the account manager. We also peeled back corporate records for a now-shuttered firm run by Bales and his brother with backing from a longtime friend and reached him to further flesh out the checkered professional history of the Staff Sgt. at the center of an explosive, fast-moving and intensely competitive story. The story demanded intense investigative reporting that netted notable results in far far less than 30 days of a breaking event.
Tags: U.S. soldier; Afghanistan; military draft; terrorist attacks; deployment
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IJEC: Mental health on campus
After the mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois, legislatures and university officials nationwide said they were taking extra measures to upgrade mental health treatment for students and to improve security on campuses The Investigative Journalism Education Consortium – a group of faculty and students at Midwest universities - decided to examine what actually had been done. What they found is that the number of college students seeking mental health care from their universities is soaring as is the severity of the mental health problems students have when they arrive on campus. The consortium also found most campuses do not have the number of counselors and resources needed. In addition, we found some universities have moved slowly or not at all to improve security and to develop effective building evacuation plans.
Tags: Mental health; health care; counselors; Midwest universities
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OSU Scandals
An investigation of a football coach from OSU that covered up NCAA violations and knowingly allowed star atheletes to play in games even though he knew they may be ineligible for competition. The university attempted to dismiss Tressel's violation as a minor oversight and suspended him for two games.
Tags: NCAA; OSU; Ohio State University; Football; College
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Gift With Strings Trips UCA President
Investigation of the misappropriation of funds by a former UCA President.
Tags: University of Central Arkansas; Gifts; College; President
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Education for Sale
Education Management Corp. was already a swiftly growing player in the lucrative world of for-profit higher education, with annual revenues topping $1 billion, but it had its sights set on industry domination. So, five years ago, the Pittsburgh company's executives agreed to sell its portfolio of more than 70 colleges to a trio of investment partnerships for $3.4 billion, securing the needed capital for an aggressive national expansion.