Officials at Oak Park and River Forest High School said they did not feel compelled to withdrawn a Tradition of Excellence award this month after receiving complaints concerning alleged fraud involving the nominee.
Gregory Cappelli was among this year’s winners. Currently in its 26th year, the Traditional of Excellence award honors past alums who have excelled in their respective fields, including business, politics, education and the arts.
Cappelli, a 1985 OPRF graduate, is currently CEO of Apollo Education Group. The Arizona-based firm operates private, higher education institutions in that state, as well as several other education institutions in the U.S. and abroad, acquired by the firm since its founding in 1973.
One of the four Arizona schools, the University of Phoenix, came under investigation by the federal government in the early 2000s for improperly distributing millions of dollars in federal aid to its students. After an investigation, the U.S. Department of Education concluded in 2000 that more than $50 million in loans and $4 million in Pell Grants were given to students who weren’t entitled to receive them.
The government found that the university — which counts its instructional time as credit hours — offered 180 instructional hours rather than the required 360 hours per academic year to qualify for aid.
After initially disputing the findings, Apollo agreed to a $6 million settlement with the government. According to reporting done by the New York Times, the university distributed nearly $340 million in federal loans and roughly $9 million in Pell Grants between 1995 and 1997, money meant to help low-income students pay for college.
The university came under fire again in 2003 after two of its former recruiters sued the school for allegedly compensating them based on the number of students they enrolled, which violates federal law. The university settled that case for about $10 million but admitted no wrongdoing, according to the New York Times.
The university would face other fraud allegations from 2008 to 2011 over its alleged mishandling of financial aid funds.
The University of Phoenix is the nation’s largest for-profit higher-ed institution, but its enrollment has fallen in recent years, to about 300,000 students in 2013, a 15 percent decline from the previous year. The publicly-traded Apollo group also saw a decline in its stock price and revenues last year.
Cappelli became the company’s CEO in 2007. Prior to that, he worked for 10 years at Zurich Switzerland-based Credit Suisse, as a research analyst and managing director.
Cappelli, along with OPRF alums Joan Rohlfing (1978), president of Nuclear Threat Initiative, and Richard Cottle (1953), a mathematician, were honored with the Tradition of Excellence Award on Nov. 7. Cappelli and Rohlfing were in attendance at the annual student assembly; Collette was absent.
Prior to the assembly, the school received a call from one person critical of Cappelli’s nomination, said Cindy Milojevic, OPRF’s director of student activities and a member of the Tradition of Excellence selection committee. The group includes mostly Student Council members, two teachers and one school board member.
Mr. Cappelli had been nominated about four years ago. Nominees can be suggested by anyone, including from the community, Milojevic said. Selections are finalized each spring by the committee. Nominees’ names are kept on file, some for years before being selected, if ever, Milojevic said.
The committee was unaware of any of the University of Phoenix’s problems when Cappelli was finally selected, Milojevic said. Karin Sullivan, OPRF’s director of communications and community relations, said Cappelli was chosen for his full body of work.
The only other complaint about him came from a current OPRF student who wrote a letter to Wednesday Journal after the Nov. 7 assembly.
“With Greg Cappelli, if there had been due cause, we would not put someone up there who was under indictment of something,” Milojevic said. “He’s been discussed at various tables as we’ve talked about it the last couple of years on and off, but never one of the top selected, so this year he was selected.
“We had no idea,” she said after receiving the phone call. “We were very shocked and I immediately started Googling and gathering data and information, and piecing things together, and started talking to Karin about it. We assessed the situation and had a conversation. So did the University of Phoenix and other universities have some press garnered around them in years past? I guess so. I didn’t follow those stories, but in research, yes. But where we are right now in his role, not the case. So at that point we had invited him; we’re not going to un-invite him. He’s accomplished a lot in his career, so we moved it forward.”
Milojevic added that once the concern came up, the Student Council was not involved in piecing the information together.
“This was done by the adults. The students were not aware or involved at that point,” she said, adding that, to her knowledge, there’s been no other issue raised like this with any past nominee.
“If there was active concern for him personally, I think we would give some clear thought to that. But in this case, that wasn’t really the case and we felt comfortable moving forward,” she said.
