Last week, the Washington DC publication National Journal gave us the scoop, in an article entitled, “What People Close to Obama Think About the Keystone XL Pipeline”: Obama-connected environmental experts “are now saying publicly what many Democratic energy and climate advisers have said more privately over the past couple of years: The Keystone XL pipeline is not that big of a deal.” The National Journal article seems designed to persuade the DC policy community of the inevitability — and maybe even the correctness — of a decision by the Obama Administration to allow the controversial pipeline to go forward. In …
Corinthian Colleges announced today that Leon Panetta, until recently the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and Marc Morial, President and CEO of the National Urban League, have joined the for-profit college company’s board of directors. In a field marked by ripoffs of students and taxpayers, Corinthian, which operates under the school names Everest, Heald, and Wyotech, has one of the worst records of all. The willingness of these two men to lend their credibility to Corinthian, which feeds off taxpayer money and often leaves its students worse off than when they started, is dismaying, to say the least.
Panetta …
If you were teaching a course on how to manage personal finances, one of the best pieces of advice you could give is to avoid attending a for-profit college. A series of government and media investigations have exposed that signing up with a for-profit college could well be one of the worst financial decisions a person could make in his or her entire life. Many of these schools offer a toxic mix of ultra-expensive tuition, low-quality classes, high dropout rates, and poor job placement. As a result, they often leave students — single parents, veterans, immigrants, and others struggling …
The U.S. Department of Education announced this morning that it will conduct new hearings and rulemaking proceedings on a range of higher education issues, including the contested “gainful employment” rule, which is aimed at curbing the abuses of predatory for-profit colleges.
Last month, a federal judge delivered his second blow in less than a year to the gainful employment rule. Judge Rudolph Contreras, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, upheld the Administration’s power to enact the rule, but, in a lawsuit brought by expensive lawyers hired by the powerful for-profit college …Continue Reading »
The owners of America’s big for-profit colleges have developed a big bag of tricks to keep tens of billions of federal dollars flowing their way, regardless of the bad consequences for students and taxpayers. Every time we think we’ve seen it all, a new brazen tactic emerges. Here’s the latest:
The nation’s second largest for-profit college businesses, troubled Education Management Corp. (EDMC), last year designated a Canadian college that it owns as a satellite campus of one of its U.S. colleges located 1500 miles away across the border. That questionable merger might have allowed EDMC, which is 41 percent …
Republican consultant Frank Luntz, a master of words, made clear in a 2002 GOP strategy memo how conservatives would address the growing threat of climate change: They would simply deny it was happening.
According to the memo:
The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community. Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate, and defer to scientists and other experts in the …
Last year, the annual convention of owners and executives of for-profit colleges (University of Phoenix, The Art Institutes, Kaplan, etc.), held in Las Vegas, featured paid speakers George W. Bush and Michelle Rhee, and, for entertainment, a fake knockoff version of Creedence Clearwater Revival. After a year in which the truth about their shoddy practices finally sent many for-profit colleges into a tailspin, they will gather again in June in Orlando. This year’s meeting of their trade association, APSCU, will feature: former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R); retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen; …
Far too often in Washington, policy decisions are influenced by big money — wealthy corporations spend millions on lobbying, public relations, and campaign contributions to get their way. Big money helps explain why your cell phone and cable TV bills are so expensive, why small investors are still unprotected from Wall Street abuses, why taxpayers subsidize incomprehensible waste, like the $33 billion a year we spend on for-profit colleges that often ruin students’ lives.
But one of the worst affronts to our democracy, and one of the worst dangers to our world, is the way that dirty energy companies — …
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