13. TCI College of Technology
TCI College of Technology, or Technical Career Institutes, was a for-profit college offering associate degrees and certificates in fields including engineering, business, and education. Nearly 200 faculty taught TCI’s students at the college’s peak. The school opened in 1909 as the Marconi Institute by Guglielmo Marconi, a man widely credited as the inventor of the radio. The school changed its name in 1919 to the RCA Institutes while David Sarnoff of the Radio Corporation of America was its leader. In 1974, it became TCI.
Alumni included Ronny Lee, a guitarist who worked with The Beatles, and contemporary Iranian artist Iran Darroudi. The school had a successful stretch after the closure of RCA Institutes, though by 2010, its graduation rates dropped to just 24 percent with high loan default rates. The college was a major institution for income mobility, though it closed in 2017 after facing economic hardship.