Reading the comments is the best.
"After reading this excellent exposé, I called the toll-free numbers of about five of the universities mentioned in the article (Nixon, Hillford...). No one answers, and the exact same musical background is playing (either immediately, or after pressing a number following the options given by the answering machine)... So yes, it was a shameful scam, now they are hiding and stopped "servicing" all their phone lines by playing the same song for all of them. Congratulations NYT for your investigative journalism."
Well that's a first. Express News is a subsidiary of NYT.