Students crowd into College Library on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus during the weeks preceding final exams. Under intense academic pressure, some students have been known to seek out and sell Adderall, a prescription stimulant, as a study aid. Allie Tempus/WCIJ

Adderall easy to find, but users face health risks

By Adam Riback, Bob Marshall and Alex Morrell
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

MADISON — Last school year, two University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students walked into a campus library with a mission: See how quickly they could score some Adderall, a popular prescription “smart drug” that users say improves their ability to study.

They were good to go in 56 seconds.

All it took was a tap on the shoulder of one woman, a stranger at a table of students studying in silence. Asked if she knew where someone could buy some Adderall, the woman offered to call her friend downstairs who was selling it.

Experts say such easy access and casual acceptance is increasingly common on campuses, including UW-Madison, where students coping with high academic demands are turning to illicit use of Adderall and other stimulants. Adderall is prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

The drug, also known to aid weight loss, is readily available for $5 a pill, which some consider a small price for the energy rush it can provide.

“When I first started taking Adderall, I was like Superwoman,” says Alyssa, a recent UW-Madison graduate now studying at a law school in New York. She asked that her real name not be used out of fear it might harm her career.

“You get a little jolt, and you’re just so much more motivated.”

But Alyssa also experienced the downside of the stimulant. A few years ago, she began overusing Adderall and landed in the hospital with an overdose.

An investigation by UW-Madison journalism students, in collaboration with the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, found university officials and local law enforcement across the state have not made it a priority to track or crack down on the apparent growing abuse of Adderall, despite health and addiction risks.

Interviews with health-care experts, university officials, police and students found:

• Overall use of Adderall is growing on campuses, and the drug is regularly abused by those with or without a prescription. It helps users stay alert as they cram for tests while coping with hangovers or lack of sleep.
• Adderall is readily available on the black market, usually sold or given away by those with prescriptions.
• Studies indicate long-term users can face side effects including sleep disruption, headaches, dependency and tics.
• Adderall also can cause mood changes, erectile dysfunction and create or exacerbate mental health problems.
• Doctors can be convinced to prescribe the drug by students who claim to have ADHD symptoms.

Despite doctors’ warnings, UW-Madison officials and police appear to have little concern over the abuse of Adderall on campus — findings that echo a 2008 report from The Capital Times. And officials at other Wisconsin campuses are seeing growing use of the prescription stimulant.

While no firm data exist, a survey conducted at an unnamed Midwestern campus and published in 2005 found 44 percent of students knew someone who used illegally obtained stimulants like Adderall — and experts suggest that trend continues. The study found four in 10 students with a stimulant prescription abused the drug at some point.

Despite Adderall’s prevalence and accessibility, UW-Madison does little to address the issue, even among incoming freshmen who participate in Student Orientation, Advising and Registration (SOAR). The program offers information ranging from housing options to tips on how to stay healthy and manage personal finances.

Dave Laur, coordinator for the campus’ Center for the First-Year Experience, says alcohol and marijuana are usually covered in-depth, while the rest of the discussion is steered by questions from students and their parents. Adderall usually doesn’t come up, he says.

“We certainly recognize that we have limited time with the students, and have many many topics of importance to cover,” Laur says. “Also we have found that students have a very short attention span for this.”

Students could face months or years behind bars if they convert prescription pills for unauthorized use, especially if the recipient overdoses. In February, a 13-year-old town of Milton boy died after a 14-year-old girl gave him some of her grandmother’s oxycodone. She is now serving a three-year term in juvenile prison, to be followed by two years of supervision.

Federal law also bars college students from getting or keeping federal financial aid if convicted of some drug crimes. Adderall-related arrests on campus are rare but not unheard of, says UW-Madison Police Sgt. Aaron Chapin.

“I know that we have had cases in the past where we’ve arrested people for selling Adderall,” Chapin says. “It’s not as prevalent as abuse of other drugs, alcohol and marijuana.”

Prescription drugs less dangerous?

The effects of Adderall are seen by students as more benign than alcohol or marijuana, says William Frankenberger, the UW-Eau Claire professor who led the 2005 study. Frankenberger, who studies ADHD, describes the prevailing attitude as, “They’re giving it to kids. It must be safe.”

He adds, “I don’t think students realize the side effects associated with stimulant use, so they have no second thoughts about taking a drug that seems to help them concentrate and gives them lots of energy.”

Dr. Eric Heiligenstein, a psychiatrist at UW-Madison’s University Health Services, says some doctors also don’t recognize the dangers of Adderall abuse.

“Physicians haven’t caught up to realize how serious the problem is,” Heiligenstein says. “Emergency room admissions, overdoses, legal problems — everything has skyrocketed.”

About 100 to 150 students come into UHS each semester saying they have ADHD. At most, he says, 1 percent of them actually do.

In reality, “They have learning disabilities, depression, anxiety, substance abuse disorders,” Heiligenstein says. “ADHD is a well-publicized and simplistic way of understanding lots of different problems, and it’s much more culturally acceptable now than some of the other difficulties are.”

He says UHS tries to properly diagnose students using such criteria as clinical histories, standardized rating scales, parental assessments and careful examination of outside information, such as school records. Still, the use and abuse of Adderall grows, Heiligenstein says, calling it one of the most diverted prescription medicines around.

“There are a lot of physicians who are not well-trained in assessing (ADHD), and they’re getting a lot of pressure from their patients to prescribe it (Adderall).”

Adderall helped Alyssa to focus in high school. Several years later, on a trip to Europe, she overdosed. Alex Morrell/WCIJ

At first, drug aided her studies

When used correctly, Adderall helps treat children and adults with ADHD, a serious disorder that causes problems with concentration or hyperactivity and interferes with learning and social functioning.

By 16, Alyssa had struggled her whole life to concentrate, but she had never been diagnosed with ADHD. Her mother, a pharmacist, grew weary of watching her daughter toil over a single subject’s homework for five hours a night.

She recalls her mother telling her pediatrician that her daughter “works way too hard for the grades that she’s getting, and it’s not fair to her.” Her doctor agreed and prescribed 20 milligrams of Adderall.
For Alyssa, the impact was immediate: She bumped her grade point average from a 3.4 on a 4.0 scale to 4.3 with the help of Adderall and advanced placement classes.

“It just made it so much easier to focus,” she recalls. “I hate saying that it’s a miracle drug, but I definitely don’t think I would be where I am today without it.”

The law student says that as an undergraduate, she was repeatedly asked by friends to sell them her pills.

“Wisconsin was insane,” she says. “My roommates, my friends in college, all the time, none of them were prescribed, and they would take it to write a paper, they would take it to go out.

“I was totally tempted. It’s such an easy way to make money.”

But her mother kept close tabs on her medication, doling out pills as Alyssa needed them.

A UW-Madison senior who agreed to talk on the condition of anonymity acknowledged she has sold pills from her Adderall prescription. She didn’t want her name used because she had sold the drugs illegally.

“I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone who doesn’t take it. It’s like taking Advil,” she says.

She also says it was “pretty easy” to get Adderall legally. “I didn’t get a full examination for my prescription. We just knew I had something …. it was minimal testing.”

Rising abuse of prescription drugs

Dr. Alex Faris, staff psychologist and substance abuse specialist at the University Counseling and Consultation Services at UW-Madison, has noticed a rise in the non-medical use of prescription drugs.

“More students are coming in because they are abusing prescription medicines like Adderall, Xanax or Valium than when I first got here five years ago,” Faris says.

Faris estimates about 5 percent of the 4,000 students treated each year at the university clinic have problems with prescription drugs. Out of those 200 students, Faris estimated about 120 have problems specific to Adderall.

However, he cautions the actual number of students suffering from prescription drug abuse is greater than the number seeking help.

“It’s very tricky to report on those numbers because I’m not sure that the number of people seeking treatment for abuse is a good indication of the seriousness or the prevalence of the problem,” Faris says.

In response to concerns about over-prescription of Adderall, UHS protocols have become increasingly stringent.

“We’ve really raised the threshold for students who want to obtain medication for (ADHD) at UHS,” Faris says. “There’s a rigorous assessment that requires two to four sessions, and we get information from the students and other sources.

“We really go above and beyond because we know that students are sometimes drug seeking.”

Problem not on the ‘radar’ for some

Despite the anecdotal evidence of increasing Adderall use, no one is quite sure how many prescriptions are written at UW-Madison. The consensus from more than a dozen university officials contacted for this story is that no one tracks the number of prescriptions of controlled substances such as Adderall.

Likewise, university officials and police have little data on Adderall abuse, and police say it is not a high priority.

Tonya Schmidt, assistant dean of students at UW-Madison, says in six years, she can recall two instances in which students were charged with misconduct due to illegal use of Adderall.

“We don’t see a ton of Adderall abuse,” Schmidt says. ” We know it’s happening, but we can’t prove it.”

UW-Madison Police have no records of any case during the 2009-10 academic year involving prescription drugs. There were six cases involving prescription drugs during the 2008-09 school year, three involving Adderall.

At UW-Eau Claire, officials say they had no evidence of Adderall abuse and don’t see it as a problem affecting their campus.

“The use of Adderall is not even on our radar here in terms of abusive practices … It’s just not something our students have been engaged in or come up in a situation where we have disciplinary action,” UW-Eau Claire spokesman Mike Rindo says. UW-Eau Claire Police Sgt. Chris Kirchman says he can’t think of any cases involving Adderall.

UW-Milwaukee Police had a handful of arrests for Adderall in the first half of 2010 that resulted in charges. Sgt. Art Koch says Adderall isn’t a special area of focus, but it’s a concern any time students are abusing drugs. Kelly Johnson, associate director of housing at UW-Milwaukee, says her department plans to do more education of students in residence halls about the dangers of prescription drug abuse, including Adderall.

At Marquette University, Dean of Students Stephanie Quade calls Adderall abuse a “silent problem” and acknowledges it’s likely a growing problem on her campus. The drug usually turns up in room searches related to other violations.

“We certainly know it’s an issue on other campuses, so we cannot be naive to think that it wouldn’t be an issue here,” Quade says. “But I have no evidence to bear that out.”

At UW-La Crosse, the story is similar.

Sgt. Scott McCullough doesn’t recall any Adderall cases, and Paula Knudson, assistant chancellor and dean of students, says she knows some students misuse the drug, but it hasn’t “become a focus at this point.”

Matt Vogel, UW-La Crosse community health specialist, teaches a class on the history of drugs and gives about 50 presentations a year on drugs and alcohol. He knows stimulant abuse is present on campus.

“We need to empower young people with accurate and honest information,” Vogel says. “If they’re empowered, I personally feel and I think there’s a lot of evidence to show that they’re much more likely to make a wise decision around substances.”

Risks serious, but many unaware

When students use Adderall without medical supervision or adequate education, they may be oblivious to its risks and side effects. Students may hear that stimulants like Adderall can make sex more enjoyable, but few users realize Adderall can have the opposite effect, says Heiligenstein, the psychiatrist.

“It’s a well-kept secret,” he says. “Erectile dysfunction in males occurs in at least 10 percent of people who take it, if not more.”

Dr. William Frankenberger. Courtesy of UW-Eau Claire

In addition, Faris, the staff psychologist at UW-Madison’s counseling service, says students may not realize Adderall can amplify existing mental health problems or create new ones. They also can grow psychologically dependent on the drug, Heiligenstein says.

“They … think that they can’t pass the tests unless they’re taking the drugs,” he says. “It becomes a very destructive cycle that requires them to abuse the medications to succeed. It’s not a good situation.”

Frankenberger, the professor and ADHD expert from UW-Eau Claire, says students without prescriptions risk taking high doses, which can have long-term consequences.

“The longer you take the drug and the higher the dose — and this is what we found in our research — the more side effects and the more troubling the outcomes for the people involved, ” Frankenberger says.

In a 2001 study of middle and high schoolers, Frankenberger found most children using stimulant medications for two or more years developed sleeping difficulties and headaches. In 40 percent of his sample, students developed tics, or involuntary muscle twitches, that they didn’t have before.

From success to addiction

Alyssa experienced striking improvements at school thanks to Adderall. But she discovered the drug’s dark side. When she was an undergraduate, her mother was discovered to have late-stage colon cancer.

“I was going through a real hard time when my mom was diagnosed,” she says. As the pressures of school and her mother’s illness mounted, Alyssa began to change her Adderall habits.

“I’m a little bit of a control freak,” Alyssa says. “Adderall helps you focus and control, so I thought the more I took the more I’d be able to control some sort of situation.”

On a trip to Europe, she overdosed.

“I was drinking and had snorted about 10 milligrams (of Adderall). I had to get my stomach pumped, and I was throwing up,” Alyssa says. “I woke up in the hospital with no recollection of the night.”

She stayed free of alcohol and Adderall for five months after the incident. After talking with a psychiatrist, Alyssa was back on medication.

Instead of Adderall, Alyssa now takes Vyvanse, a different ADHD treatment that she says makes her less anxious. She attributes much of her negative experience to the demands she felt at UW-Madison to balance academics and a frenetic social life.

“When I was at Madison, and going out three or four days a week, most of the days after I was hung over. So I was really crunched for time when I did my work. Here (in New York), since I’m not going out, I have so many more A’s and so much more time to finish my work,” Alyssa says.

“Wisconsin’s such a big party school,” she adds. “The mentality is sort of ‘work hard, play hard.’ I think a lot of people go to the extreme.”

Editor’s note: Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism intern Allie Tempus and UW-Madison journalism student Lavilla Capener contributed to this report, which began in a reporting class taught by Professor Deborah Blum. Adam Riback and Bob Marshall were students in the class, while Alex Morrell was an intern for the Center.

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media.

Mikael Sankko (foreground), 22, from Finland, cleans up after the Tommy Bartlett Water-Ski Show along with other foreign workers from Turkey, Ecuador and Finland. Luke Davis/WCIJ

PHOTO GALLERY

Dells foreign student workers

Each year, 2,000 foreign students descend on the Dells to fill out the summer tourism work force. Click the image below to see a pop-up gallery of photos by Luke Davis and Alec Luhn.

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Transportation troubles: Getting around the Dells isn’t always easy for foreign students, and it was fatal for one student this summer.
Substandard housing: For foreign students, it’s hit or miss finding a decent place to stay; some motels have been closed.

By Alec Luhn
For the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

WISCONSIN DELLS — Osman Mehmeti, a college student from Kosovo, traveled more than 5,000 miles and paid $3,000 in fees and airfare to work at Chula Vista Resort in Wisconsin Dells, which bills itself as “The Waterpark Capital of the World.”

Mehmeti was hired by the hotel and water park in 2009, joining an estimated 2,000 foreign students who use a federal work-travel exchange program to help keep one of Wisconsin’s top tourism destinations running. The program has become a crucial source of seasonal labor for tourism areas around the country and in Wisconsin, including the Dells and Door County.

“Always in the beginning they were saying you are working good,” Mehmeti, 23, said in an interview.

But, Mehmeti said, he was among a group of students fired in August 2009 before the scheduled end of their jobs at Chula Vista. Other foreign student workers in the Dells say they’ve had to contend with substandard housing conditions. And one was killed this summer in a bicycle accident that officials say illustrates dangerous transportation problems for student workers in the Dells.

A two-month investigation by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism found that while many foreign students have positive experiences in Wisconsin Dells, some encounter economic, housing and transportation safety problems while working under the federal work-travel program overseen by the U.S. Department of State.

Interviews with business owners, federal officials, sponsor agencies, overseas and local recruiters, former participants and 24 current student workers in the federal program show that problems in the Dells include:

– Some students arrive from abroad to find their job offers have been canceled, their work hours are fewer than promised, or they are let go when business slows down.

– Federal regulations don’t cover employers or recruiting agencies, leaving students with little recourse if they feel they’ve been mistreated.

– While many businesses provide reasonable living arrangements, a high demand for housing leaves other students living in substandard conditions. Since 2008, two Dells-area motels that had housed students have been closed because of health and safety violations.

– A lack of public transportation means some young workers face dangerous bicycle rides on heavily congested roads. In July, a Russian student was killed while riding along Wisconsin Dells Parkway. Nineteen of the 21 bicycle-vehicle crashes reported in Wisconsin Dells and Lake Delton since 2008 involved international students, police reports indicate.

In 2009, 99,672 international students came to the United States on the work-travel exchange program, down 35 percent from 152,958 the year before.

The decrease followed a call by the Department of State for work-travel sponsors to voluntarily reduce the number of participants in light of the national economic downturn, according to an agency spokesperson.

Daniel Saenz, 22, from Ecuador, sells refreshments at the Tommy Bartlett Water-Ski Show on Lake Delton. Luke Davis/WCIJ

For many students, the gamble of working in America pays off. They improve their English, gain work experience and earn money to pay off the program cost, travel to places like the Grand Canyon or pay for their college education back home.

Some also overstay their visas; one Dells motel manager who has worked with many work-travel students believes at least 10 percent don’t return as scheduled to their native countries.

Others, including Mehmeti, leave disappointed and with little of the goodwill that the federal program is supposed to engender.

Mehmeti said he was fired by Chula Vista last August along with 12 other foreign student employees. He said managers complained they weren’t performing housekeeping work quickly or carefully enough. But he believes it was because of slow business.

A second student employee, Elitsa Hristova, from Bulgaria, said she was among those who were fired.

Pat Finnegan, general manager of Chula Vista, said he doesn’t recall any such incident from last summer. He said the resort would not have terminated student workers because business was slow.

“Simply firing someone because we don’t have hours is not how we do business,” Finnegan said, adding, “Even at the slowest time of year, we’re still looking for people.”

But GeoVisions, the New Hampshire sponsor company that arranged for Mehmeti to work at Chula Vista, isn’t placing any students at the resort this year because of several “things” that happened there in 2009, chief operating officer Jim Miller said. He declined to provide details.

“My dream was to come here and see the U.S.A. and improve my language and to make some money,” said Mehmeti, whose journey began with an advertisement he saw at his university back in Kosovo. ”But when I came to the U.S.A., everything was terrible in Chula Vista.”

Some local residents say there should be someone to stick up for the temporary workers.  The Rev. Jay Heesch, pastor of the Pine Valley Church in Wisconsin Dells, often invites students for meals and other activities. He hears complaints about work and living conditions.

“They need an advocate, and I am beginning to lose my patience as summer after summer they get treated like second-class citizens,” Heesch wrote in an e-mail.

Foreign workers fill labor shortage

Sunrise on the Wisconsin Dells Parkway: About 2,000 foreign students come to the Dells each year to fill out the summer work force. Many pay between $2,500 and $4,500 in airfare and fees to get the jobs, but they’re not always guaranteed. Luke Davis/WCIJ

The Dells, a conglomeration of resorts, water parks and other attractions, is one of Wisconsin’s top tourist destinations. It draws 3 million visitors who spend an estimated $1 billion a year.

The local tourism industry is fueled by the equivalent of 23,500 full-time jobs  — even though the year-round population of Wisconsin Dells and adjacent Lake Delton is about 5,500.

A significant portion of that gap is filled each year by thousands of foreign student workers who come to the Dells to clean hotel rooms, operate amusement rides and wait tables.

No one is sure how many Dells workers are work-travel students, since no private or government agency tracks the number of them in the area.

Lake Delton Village Board member Tom Diehl, who owns properties including the Tommy Bartlett Water-Ski Show on Lake Delton, estimated there are about 2,000 work-travel students this year among the thousands of summer workers, about the same as last year.

Participants come to the United States on J-1 exchange visitor visas, as do nannies, visiting scholars and others. The program was established in 1961 to increase understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through educational and cultural exchanges.

Of the 24 current participants from 14 countries interviewed for this article, 10 said they were having a positive experience. An additional four said their experience is positive overall, but they have some complaints.

Claudiu Aionesei, a former work-travel student from Romania who has a permanent job at the Kalahari Resort Convention Center, said he has “heard more positive opinions than negative ones” from students about the program. He said students who were allowed to work plenty of hours tended to be content.

Ten students interviewed for this article said their experience has been negative in the Dells.

The students’ grievances included a lack of communication with their physically distant sponsors, poor housing conditions, false or incomplete claims made by work-travel recruiters abroad and poor or deceitful treatment at the hands of employers.

It’s not clear who’s to blame. Some work-travel participants and business owners feel international students arrive with unrealistic expectations about how much they will earn or the type of housing they will have.

Labor gap grows over decade

Tom Diehl, owner of the Tommy Bartlett Water-Ski Show, prepares for the evening’s entertainment. "The Dells could not survive without J-1 kids," says Diehl, referring to the visa program that brings thousands of international students to the Dells each year. He said the success of the student-worker program rests on employers treating students fairly. Luke Davis/WCIJ

The Wisconsin Dells tourism industry began to expand in the early 1990s as new resorts including the Wilderness, Great Wolf and Kalahari were built and existing properties such as Mt. Olympus Water & Theme Park and Noah’s Ark Waterpark expanded. The demand for labor came to far exceed the supply of willing workers.

International students with J-1 visas now form an integral part of the Dells labor force, according to large employers in the area. Diehl, for example, has been bringing in work-travel students from Finland for 11 years and currently employs 38 Finns, one student from Ecuador and one from Turkey among his 150 summer workers.

Although Diehl had more Americans applying for positions this year because of the recession, it’s still not enough to meet his employment needs, he said.

“The Dells could not survive without J-1 kids,” Diehl said.

Part of the demand for international students stems from the fact that many young Americans who in the past filled seasonal jobs are no longer willing to move to south-central Wisconsin to perform onerous, low-wage work such as housekeeping, said Katherine Frankov, a local motel manager who has worked with many J-1 students.

By contrast, “J-1′s are willing to do anything and everything,” she said.

Several large employers were reluctant to discuss their employment of work-travel students.

Of the eight largest businesses that belong to the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau, a representative of Mt. Olympus declined to say how many work-travel students the company employs or be interviewed for this article. Management at the Great Wolf Lodge, Ho-Chunk Casino and Hotel and Kalahari didn’t return several phone calls.

Those that did respond reported employing about 700 international students who make up varying fractions of their workforces: 6 percent at Original Wisconsin Ducks and Dells Boat Tours, 18 percent at Chula Vista Resort, about 23 percent at Wilderness Resort and 33 percent at Noah’s Ark.

Traveling across the world to work

With several steps and middlemen along the way, coming to work in the United States on a J-1 visa can be fraught with difficulties.

The road to work-travel can start with an employer seeking student workers, a student job-searching from abroad or an agency soliciting job offers and recruiting participants.

“It’s hard to generalize because the program can work in so many different ways,” Department of State spokeswoman Laura Tischler said.

In many cases, a foreign recruiting agency — which may or may not be affiliated with a U.S.-approved sponsor organization — advertises work-travel opportunities and helps students apply, for a fee.

Eventually, each student must apply with a sponsor organization designated by the Department of State. The sponsor then issues a form confirming the student has enough money to live in the United States. Students bring that form to a U.S. consulate or embassy to get their visas.

Counting fees from the sponsor company, a foreign recruiting agency and the visa process, as well as insurance coverage and airfare to the United States, most students pay between $2,500 and $4,500 to come to Wisconsin to work.

Some jobs missing on arrival

Federal regulations require sponsor organizations to place at least 50 percent of their participants in jobs. But employers aren’t obligated to hire any student who signs a job offer, leaving some stranded with no job upon their arrival.

That’s what Emil Aghayev, a student from Azerbaijan who thought he was slated to work at Wilderness Resort, said happened to him.

When Aghayev arrived at the resort June 14, he was told his offer to earn $7.50 an hour as a lifeguard starting June 18 had been canceled, he said.

Wilderness spokeswoman Heidi Fendos said Aghayev was denied employment because the resort had issued a job offer to “Emil Guliyev,” and that “Guliyev” had been whited out on the job offer, and “Aghayev” written in.

Aghayev’s recruiting agency in Azerbaijan, Delta Education, offered a conflicting version of events. A Delta spokesman said Aghayev forgot to bring the job offer document with him from Azerbaijan. According to the company, it e-mailed Aghayev another copy June 30 and helped him try to find another job in the Dells when that didn’t work.

But Aghayev contended he never heard back from Delta Education after he told them the job at Wilderness had been cancelled.

Regardless, Aghayev found himself halfway across the world with no job, unable to pay back the $3,000 in fees and airfare his family had lent him.

“I am angry because I have paid so much money,” he said. “My father and my mother need me; I must earn money, and I didn’t get anything.”

After weeks spent searching unsuccessfully for a job, Aghayev returned to Azerbaijan in mid-July, according to a receptionist at the motel where he had lived. Attempts in August to reach Agheyev to further discuss his job quest were unsuccessful.

Adam Muller runs a Dells-based agency that places foreign students in jobs and housing. He said he wears a captain’s hat so students can easily identify him. Alec Luhn/WCIJ

Jobs sometimes hard to find

Other students arrive without an offer and must begin job hunting, often hampered by poor English skills and limited knowledge of the United States.

The federal rules require sponsors to “undertake reasonable efforts to secure suitable employment” for those who haven’t found a job after a week of searching.

Employment for such students is hard to find, said Adam Muller, a former Dells motel owner who now runs International Employment Resources, the only Dells-based agency that finds jobs and housing for work-travel students. He said students should be required to sign a form warning they may not make extra money or even be employed once they get to the United States.

Because of errors in immigration databases, students also sometimes face delays of up to three months in getting Social Security numbers to work in the United States, said Lois Magee of the nonprofit immigrant rights organization the American Immigration Council. Magee has years of experience working with J-1 students at both the council and the YMCA.

“If you’ve got a good Romanian last name, it is likely that the (customs) agent didn’t enter it in correctly,” Magee said. “In my experience, roughly 50 percent of the people who come into the U.S. do not have their information correctly entered.”

Too few hours

Finnish employee Kira Koljonen, 23, talks to a child at the Tommy Bartlett Water-Ski Show snack stand. According to her boss, Tom Diehl, many foreign students have applied to Tommy Bartlett when they can't get enough hours at their first job. Luke Davis/WCIJ

The biggest problem mentioned by students is fewer work hours than expected.

No minimum or maximum number of hours is established in federal regulations, although many sponsors include a spot on their documentation for employers to indicate hours per week. Six of the students interviewed, however, said they were receiving fewer hours than stated in their job offers.

Diehl said he has seen a stream of international students apply for second jobs at his properties this summer.

“They are not getting the hours they thought they were going to get,” he said.

Gizem Akarsu, 24, from Turkey, said she was told she would work 40 hours a week at Wilderness, but only gets 20 hours a week, which isn’t enough to cover her living costs.

Fendos, the Wilderness spokeswoman, said the number of hours stipulated in the job offer is an average that may fluctuate, adding that the resort will work with any student who feels he isn’t getting the correct number of hours.

Gabriela Martinez, Stephanie Russo and Viviana Oñate, friends from Ecuador who work at the Polynesian water park and resort, said their job offers stated they would work 30 hours a week, but they’ve been working less than that. The general manager of the Polynesian declined to be interviewed for this article.

“We don’t get anything we were supposed to,” Russo wrote in a follow-up e-mail.  “I think this trip is not being what I planned.”

Under the J-1 visa rules, employers aren’t regulated by the Department of State.

“The only real incentive in place for employers to treat people fairly is they don’t want to get a bad reputation in the host country,” said Patrick Hickey, director of the Workers’ Rights Center of Madison, an advocacy group seeking to resolve problems in the workplace.

Diehl agreed, saying, ”The success or future of an international program depends on word of mouth.”

‘Sweet words’ hide true cost of program

Recruiting agencies located in students’ home countries also aren’t subject to state department oversight. Students say recruiters sometimes fan unrealistic expectations.

“They told us we were going to win a lot of money and a lot of hours,” Russo said of Ordex International, the Ecuador-based recruiting agency that placed her and her friends.

Teresa Rivera, the director of Ordex, said the agency helps students create a budget of likely expenses and expected income based on their job offers but doesn’t guarantee the students will earn enough to pay off the cost of the program.

Yevgenii Moiseyev, 19, from Russia, said in an interview in Russian that the recruiting agency he worked with in St. Petersburg exaggerated earning potential with “sweet words” to attract students.

“They play on naivete, and that’s the way they make money,” said Moiseyev, who works 25 to 30 hours a week at the Park Motel and wants a second job to help pay off $2,600 in airfare and program fees.

“The first job only covers coming here, (program) fees and room and board,” said Russian student Elizaveta Chernousova, 21, who works full-time as a housekeeper at the local Best Western Ambassador Inn. With a second job, you can travel, she said.

But many students “need to work two jobs just to make ends meet,” said Frankov, the motel manager, adding, “That’s not even talking about saving money.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media. The Wisconsin Dells Events newspaper contributed to this report. Alec Luhn can be reached at aluhn *at* wisconsinwatch.org.

Janesville resident Melissa Willes, who is suing Westwood College for operating without state approval, says she and her husband, Eric Willes, were "heavily misled" by Westwood. They owe about $50,000 for their schooling but have no degrees to show for it. Photo by Dan Lassiter/The Janesville Gazette

By Kate Golden
Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Now that she knows Westwood College was never authorized to operate in Wisconsin, Janesville resident Melissa Willes wants her $25,000 back.

“The biggest mistake of my life was attending college,” said Willes, 23, one of at least 200 Wisconsin students who have taken online classes through Westwood.

The major for-profit college, based in Denver, is coming under intensified federal scrutiny since a recent government report documented improper recruiting practices within the nation’s fast-growing for-profit college sector.

Willes said a Westwood recruiter told her the $75,000 online bachelor’s degree in interior design she was considering wasn’t approved yet in Wisconsin, but assured her it would be by the end of her three-year program.

Willes never finished the degree after maxing out her borrowing limit for federal student loans. Westwood credits generally aren’t transferable to other schools, the college acknowledges.

On July 7, Willes sued Westwood in Rock County Circuit Court, and on Aug. 6 Westwood moved the case to U.S. District Court in Madison. Willes charged that the college was operating without the required state approval, which is designed to ensure educational quality and protect students from fraud. She has asked the court to certify her suit as a class action.

In her lawsuit, Willes claimed that misleading marketing tactics by Westwood enticed her to enroll in a substandard program and take on excessive tuition debt in pursuit of a “largely useless” degree.

• DOWNLOAD PDF: Melissa Willes’s original complaint

State regulators confirm Westwood never applied for approval.

Other major for-profit online colleges, such as Capella University, are licensed in Wisconsin by the Educational Approval Board, which oversees for-profit colleges and technical schools, out-of-state nonprofits, and Wisconsin nonprofit colleges incorporated since 1992. Among those exempt from its oversight are the University of Wisconsin system and schools regulated by other agencies, such as cosmetology or real estate.

David Dies, executive secretary of the EAB, said that “technically speaking,” thousands of schools like Westwood could violate state statute by signing up Wisconsin students without board approval. However, Dies said, the board doesn’t have the means or the will to oversee them all.

In response to questions from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism, Westwood spokesman Gil Rudawsky didn’t deny the college lacked official approval in Wisconsin but wrote in an e-mail that the “licensing of online colleges in individual states is an ongoing and developing issue across the country.”

The Texas Workforce Commission ordered Westwood to stop offering online courses there after the law firm representing Willes filed a similar lawsuit in Texas over Westwood’s lack of a license to operate in that state.

For-profit schools have grown dramatically across the country in recent years, and taxpayer-funded student loans are their bread and butter. The $25 billion they raked in from federal grants and loans in 2009 had doubled over 10 years, according to a U.S. Senate report.

For-profits under fire for recruiting tactics

Willes’ lawsuit came as the nationwide for-profit college industry was exposed for widespread aggressive and deceptive recruiting in a scathing U.S. Government Accountability Office report. That report prompted U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to promise a crackdown on for-profits’ recruiting practices.

David Hawkins, director of public policy and research at the National Association of College Admission Counseling, testified Aug. 4 before a U.S. Senate committee that recruiters have hidden the true cost of their programs, the quality of the courses and the transferability of credits to other colleges, and have made “false statements or misrepresentations about employment prospects and earnings potential.”

“These do not appear to be isolated incidents of bad actors or rogue officers,” Hawkins said. “This appears to be a fairly standard practice.”

Westwood has pledged to clean up its recruiting practices — paying recruiters salaries instead of commissions, increasing admissions requirements and investigating its own financial aid and recruitment processes — but stands by its schooling.

“We are proud of the work by our 40,000 students and graduates, many of whom are working at businesses throughout Wisconsin. We will continue to defend their hard work, and the opportunities we provide them through our online program,” Rudawsky wrote in response to an interview request from the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Westwood has filed a motion to force Willes’ lawsuit out of court and into arbitration, citing an agreement she signed upon enrollment that any disputes would be resolved that way.

Westwood has 17 brick-and-mortar campuses nationwide. In Wisconsin it offers only online programs, according to court filings. The college has more than 15,000 students in 27 degree programs and is owned by Denver-based Alta College Inc.

Westwood admits recruiting problems
At the Senate hearing, the GAO showed hidden-camera videos of Westwood and other for-profit college recruiters using what appeared to be aggressive and deceptive tactics on undercover agents posing as potential students.

Of the 12 for-profits in the probe — including Westwood, the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University, all of which enroll Wisconsin students — each one used deceptive practices, GAO director of forensic audits Gregory Kutz told Congress. And recruiters at four appeared to encourage would-be students to commit fraud to get federal student loans, Kutz said.

To one agent who claimed to have a $250,000 inheritance in the bank, a recruiter in the GAO video said, “Frankly, in my opinion, they don’t need to know how much cash you have.”

GAO agents didn’t identify the college, but George Burnett, chief executive officer of Westwood, confirmed to the Denver Post that the recruiter was one of his and said he was “shaken and appalled.”

Westwood is facing three other lawsuits in California, Colorado and Texas from the same Florida consumer law firm — James, Hoyer, Newcomer, Smiljanich & Yanchunis — that is representing Willes.

In turn, Westwood has sued the “predatory” law firm for allegedly defaming Westwood, in part by creating a website called westwoodscammed.me and through “derogatory Twitter messages.”

Only some colleges seek EAB approval

Willes’ lawsuit claims Westwood should have sought approval from the state’s Educational Approval Board, which regulates educational programs ranging from certificates to teach belly dancing to doctorates in psychology. The board also helps students resolve disputes with colleges.

According to state law, the EAB’s charge is to “protect students, prevent fraud … and encourage schools to maintain courses consistent in quality, content and length with generally accepted educational standards.”

“Unapproved schools are breaking the law,” EAB’s website states.

But the website also acknowledges that “many” online schools don’t seek its approval. It recommends that potential students check with the board to see if schools are approved.

Unapproved schools face $500-per-day fines, according to the EAB’s website. But Westwood has never been cited for operating without state approval. The board’s response to unapproved online schools is not to punish them, but to try to get them to apply for approval, according to Dies.

Such a school triggers the EAB’s interest, Dies said, only if the board gets several complaints. Then the board asks how many Wisconsin students the school has enrolled. If it’s at least 10 or 12, Dies said, the EAB will prod the school to apply for approval.

The board has known about Westwood since at least 2006, when it resolved a student’s billing complaint in favor of the school. But Westwood’s status in Wisconsin apparently didn’t come up then, and Dies said one complaint wasn’t enough to concern the board.

Dies called allegations about Westwood and other for-profits’ deceptive recruiting “clearly troubling,” and the sort of problem that his board would handle. But he also said the board requires a complaint to act, and hasn’t gotten any recently from Westwood students or employers.

“We respond to situations that are brought to our attention,” he said.

Dies said the EAB isn’t fully equipped to regulate the burgeoning for-profit college industry. Its budget of about $500,000 has been nearly flat over the past decade, while the number of approved institutions has grown 46 percent, from 112 to 164.

Husband also out thousands

Willes said her husband also feels betrayed by Westwood. Eric Willes signed up for a video-game design program at Westwood while living in Illinois — but never finished after his federal loans ran out.

After that, he made the mistake of accepting Westwood’s offer of an additional loan — at a whopping interest rate of 18 percent. That loan covered three months of schooling, and accounts for half of the total $25,000 he now owes.

Now he’s making $12.50 an hour at a furniture store. Melissa Willes is making $11 an hour as an insurance agent’s assistant.

The couple cannot afford the minimum $1,200 a month to repay their student loans, so those are on hold, some accruing interest. Because of their credit problems, they needed co-signers even to rent a home. They would like to have children, but say they must wait until they have more money.

“Once they’re done milking you for all you’re worth, they drop you like a hot potato,” Melissa Willes said. “And then, to boot, to find out they’re not even registered in the state of Wisconsin? It’s a double whammy.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners — Wisconsin Public Television, Wisconsin Public Radio and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication — and other news media. Kate Golden can be reached at kgolden@wisconsinwatch.org.

Madison Elementary kindergarten teacher Kathie Koebler reads the book "Splash in the Ocean" to her Janesville School District students in May. Some of the students have never had a book read to them before they got to the school. Photo Courtesy of THE JANESVILLE GAZETTE

‘You’re looking at more and more challenged families’

By Jacob Kushner and Kryssy Pease

Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism

Nearly four in 10 Wisconsin elementary students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch last school year, and the proportion of low-income elementary students has climbed every year of this decade, according to state Department of Public Instruction data analyzed by the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

The Center found the proportion of Wisconsin elementary students eligible for subsidized lunches hit 37.6 percent last year, compared to 30.3 percent in 2000.

The proportion of low-income students doubled or more than doubled in 47 of 411 public school districts during the period, reflecting the toll of the worsening economy and what some experts call a growing threat to education in Wisconsin.

Green Bay has the state’s fifth-largest school district, but its low-income population grew by 2,398 elementary students, representing the largest gain of any school system. Districts in Madison and Kenosha also added more low-income elementary students in the past nine years than Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s largest school district.

More than 90 percent of the growth in the low-income elementary student population since 2000 occurred outside of Milwaukee, the Center’s analysis found.

Searchable database of subsidized lunch eligibility in Wisconsin elementary schools. Data for school districts.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, the state’s top education official, said he expects the number of low-income students, which last year included more than 160,000 elementary students and an additional 132,000 in higher grade levels, will continue to grow for another year or two. Job losses in Wisconsin have led to a near doubling in the past year of the statewide unemployment rate, now at an estimated 8.7 percent.

A kindergarten student in the Janesville School District puts materials away in her cubby at Madison Elementary School in May. Since 2000, the school's low-income population has doubled. More than half of its students are eligible for subsidized lunches. Photo Courtesy of THE JANESVILLE GAZETTE

The expansion of low-income student populations comes at a time when districts across Wisconsin are facing a 3 percent overall cut in general state aid, and sharper cuts in some schools, which may force leaders to reduce services and increase class sizes. Yet low-income students often need more attention in school to compensate for a lack of academic support and distractions caused by financial problems at home, national research has shown.

“Children who come from impoverished backgrounds, especially if they become poor because their parents are losing their jobs … that creates more stress on a family, more dysfunction in a family,” Evers said. “Sometimes in these economic times the schools are the best refuges … it’s one of the places where we need to make sure we nurture kids well when their families are hurt by job loss.”

Although free and reduced school lunch enrollment is frequently used to gauge the size of low-income student populations, experts caution that many things influence that number, including how aggressively schools recruit students for the program and the stigma often associated with receiving assistance. That stigma is less prevalent among younger children, experts say, so the Center based its analysis on subsidized-lunch enrollment in the lower grades in the 411 districts and 12 southeastern Wisconsin charter schools with elementary students.

“I don’t think there’s any question that low-income students present a tremendous challenge, financially, academically, coming into the schools,” said state Sen. John Lehman , D-Racine, chair of the Senate Education Committee, who taught in the Racine School District for 20 years.

“You’re looking at more and more challenged families, and those students really absorb resources,” Lehman said. “In my long experience teaching in the schools, I can tell you that it’s tremendous work on the part of school districts. Your school district becomes the substitute in many cases where the kids have not gotten boosts at home.”

The National School Lunch Program provided $114.4 million in subsidies and $25 million in food for lunches at public and private schools in Wisconsin during the 2007-08 school year, the most recent period for which figures are available.

Milwaukee had the third-highest proportion of students in the program, with 79 percent of its elementary pupils eligible for subsidized lunches last year.

To see free and reduced price lunch trends in your local school district, visit www.WisconsinWatch.org.

Will schools adapt?

Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, a federally funded center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said an increase in low-income students places a very real burden on schools. Students from middle- and upper-income families typically receive more educational support from their parents – such as help with homework and educational trips and activities – than students from low-income families. When there are more needy students, the burden of providing that attention may shift to the teacher, he said.

“Having books, a stable family environment, a place to study, having supplies, good nutrition — all of these are material factors in the home environment that help kids with more economic advantages do better in school,” Gamoran said. “If you have an increasing proportion of students without such material advantages, then that makes it more challenging to be successful with those students in schools.”

Barb Keresty, a reading instructor at two Madison Metropolitan School District elementary schools, said low-income students often require special attention because they’re not read to as much at home. For example, in Madison’s Reading Recovery program last year, 86 percent of the students qualified for free or reduced price lunch. In all, 46.9 percent of elementary students in the district were enrolled in the free and reduced lunch program — up by nearly half since 2000.

“That’s one thing that really puts kids at a disadvantage — you have to be read to before you get to school age, ” Keresty said, adding that parents under “duress” often lack the time or energy to read to their children. “It really always comes back to poverty, basically. It doesn’t mean those kids can’t be successful. It’s just that that’s the population of kids that many times are struggling.”

Evers said he believes schools will adjust to the fact that a growing number of their students come from families who are financially on the edge.

“Teachers are teachers because they love helping children, and they’re just not going to turn their back on people,” Evers said.

‘Hard times for people’

Among the children getting subsidized lunch is 7-year-old Diamond Smith. She isn’t a fan of school lunch — she prefers her mom’s home-cooked enchiladas to the “nasty” mac-n-cheese lunch at Elvejhem Elementary School in Madison.

The subsidized lunch program "helps out because these are hard times for people,” says Iesha Smith, shown with her children (from left) Cortez McCree, 12; Davontae Smith, 5; Diamond Smith, 7; and Drekwon Smith, 9. All four receive free lunches in the Madison School District. WCIJ/JOSEPH W. JACKSON III

But for her mother, Iesha Smith, the school lunch program keeps Diamond and her three other children well fed — and ready to learn in school. Smith, who makes $15,000 a year as a full-time nursing assistant, said she doesn’t consider herself low-income but still can’t stretch her paycheck far enough to pack lunches every day.

“It (subsidized lunch) helps out because these are hard times for people,” she said. “You can’t afford taking lunch to school every single day, especially when you’ve got multiple kids like I do.”

In Janesville, the proportion of elementary students eligible for the subsidized lunch program increased sharply from 26 percent to 40.9 percent since 2000. That trend is likely to continue as the full effect of the layoff of 1,200 employees from the shuttered General Motors assembly plant are felt. Subsidized lunch data are collected each October, meaning that last year’s number doesn’t fully reflect the layoffs at GM, where most workers lost their jobs in December. Janesville now has the third-highest unemployment rate among Wisconsin cities at 14.1 percent — double the rate from July 2008.

Marge Hallenbeck, principal of Rock River Charter School and director of at-risk student programs for the Janesville schools, said the district applies for charitable grants to fund social services. It also has begun after-school community centers in schools with high numbers of low-income students.

Said Hallenbeck, “We’re looking to new ways to do that kind of supporting.  We’ve got to become more creative and innovative to meet those needs.”

The increased reliance on the lunch subsidies matches other indicators that child poverty in the state is growing. The percentage of Wisconsin children living in families below 200 percent of the poverty line — $42,054 for a family of four with two children — has increased in recent years to an estimated 34 percent in 2007, the most recent year available, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charity that tracks child well-being. This school year, a household of four earning $28,665 or less would qualify for free lunch. Families earning $40,793 or less qualify for reduced-price lunch.

In the Green Bay School District, the proportion of students in the subsidized lunch program was up by half since 2000, and included 56.9 percent of elementary students.

“Families are calling like crazy right now because they can’t afford school supplies for their children,” Alison Draheim, coordinator of at-risk programs who works with low-income families in the Green Bay district, said as the school year got under way. “A lot of working families that were maybe able to handle that expense in previous years this year are not able to.”

Although she believes school can be a refuge for children from impoverished families, Draheim said there are some problems schools can’t fix.

“It’s hard to focus on algebra when you’re hungry or other kids are looking at you because you smell,” she said. “It impacts children socially, emotionally which always has an impact on their academics.”

‘Frustrating for local school districts’

While the number of low-income students continues to grow, financial pressures are making it hard for some districts to find the money to support them. The newly approved state budget cuts general school aids by an average 3 percent this school year, but about one-fourth of the districts face at least a 15 percent reduction, according to DPI figures. To make up for the lost money, schools must reduce services or raise property taxes — a difficult move in tough economic times.

Miles Turner, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators, said this year’s cut in state aid intensifies the crunch felt from 16 years of revenue limits, which often don’t allow schools to increase revenue as fast as expenses grow.

“What it’s going to mean is fewer services for children, higher class sizes, poorer quality education in the state of Wisconsin,” Turner said. “Our educational system is becoming less and less adequate for dealing with our students.”

Although state aid is declining, federal help for schools with low-income students is on the way in the form of $148 million in stimulus funding for Title I, which funds reading programs and other help for struggling students. But Turner said the funding won’t save Wisconsin schools over the long term. He said the additional federal aid is a temporary boost, likening it the government offering to pay the telephone bill of a family whose home is in foreclosure.

“When you’ve got a huge budget deficit … you can’t use this Title I money to save the regular classroom teachers that are being laid off or the programs that are being cut,” Turner said. “It’s very frustrating for local school districts to get this money channeled through one area of expenditure.”

Said Evers: “We’re certainly appreciative of federal money, but it’s not a permanent solution. Somehow that hole will need to be filled.”

The nonprofit Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with its partners – Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television and the UW-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication – and other news media.