Donald Graham, who turned his family company from the fabled owners of the Washington Post newspaper into the purveyors of the predatory for-profit college Kaplan University, met twice late this month with senior White House officials. Graham’s aim, as documents he left behind and were posted by the Office of Management and Budget indicate: to derail the
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An investigative report released this morning documents how some for-profit college owners have converted their companies into non-profit schools in a way that allows them to evade the regulatory obligations and deservedly bad reputation of for-profits while continuing to reap enormous financial benefits.  These operators have done so, the report finds, by subverting the rules governing non-profit schools, while the
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The New York Post today reports on an astounding fact that has been in plain sight for more than a year: Washington business scion Donald Graham has co-founded a scholarship program for young immigrants that is sending some of its students, and donor dollars, to colleges owned by Donald Graham’s own for-profit company. When I read
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A blockbuster, year-in-the-making investigative series about the for-profit college industry appears online in the Miami Herald today, and, as industry analysts at BMO Capital Markets predicted earlier this week, “Obviously, this is not going to portray the industry in a positive light.” It doesn’t, but that’s because the industry practices and conduct that the Herald found are simply abominable. (I have studied
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A network of U.S. marketing companies run glossy websites promising jobs, health benefits, food stamps, and heating assistance, sites with names like localemploymentnetwork.org or medicaidinsurancebenefits.com. But according to former employees of a company connected to these operations, the real purpose of these sites is a classic bait-and-switch: to get low-income people, single mothers, veterans, and unemployed older people on the
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I mailed this letter today to Mr. Arthur E. Benjamin, Vice Chair, American Institutes Holdings LLC; Mr. Donald E. Graham, Chairman and CEO, Graham Holdings Company; and Mr. Steve Gunderson, President and CEO, Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities. Dear Mr. Benjamin, Mr. Graham, and Mr. Gunderson: I am writing regarding the career college sector
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This week the Washington Post editorialized against President Obama’s “gainful employment” rule, aimed at holding career training programs accountable for leaving students with insurmountable debt, without disclosing that the newspaper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, serves on the board of directors of a company that owns for-profit colleges and that is lobbying actively against the rule. An
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I’ve just published a new 100-page e-book, Stealing America’s Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students’ Lives. You can buy it for 99 cents on Amazon. I hope you’ll read it, because it is a critical moment for Americans to examine and speak out on the issue of for-profit colleges, the trade schools that bombard
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