Howard “Buck” McKeon, a Republican former chairman of the House Education Committee, heads up the list of lobbyists paid, largely with your federal tax dollars, to lobby Congress to send even more tax dollars to for-profit colleges in the COVID-19 era. Lobbying reports for the first quarter of 2020 show that just a few of
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Faced with concerns from critics in Congress and elsewhere that many for-profit colleges will take advantage of the COVID-19 crisis to accelerate predatory behavior, the industry’s chief lobbyist, Steve Gunderson, has been repeating his claim that the bad actors among for-profit schools have shuttered, and what remains are sincere, hard-working operations focused on helping students.
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This article is the first in a new series, produced by Republic Report and the Project on Predatory Student Lending (part of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center) — COVID College Cons. Steve Gunderson, the Republican ex-congressman who runs CECU, the frequently-dishonest lobbying group of for-profit colleges, emailed his members on Monday, warning that in
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  With thousands of people dying or imperiled by the global COVID-19 pandemic, and millions losing their jobs and their businesses across the country, it’s difficult to keep track of all the challenges our society faces. But one that Republic Report will keep focusing on is consumer scams: dishonest operators who will seek to profit
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday that it plans to stop approving use of GI Bill dollars for veterans seeking to start education programs at two of the biggest for-profit college operations. One is Perdoceo, which runs American Intercontinental University and Colorado Technical University. The other is the University of Phoenix, long the
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A report this week from the news service Capitol Forum presents strong evidence that the for-profit college business Perdoceo, formerly Career Education Corp. (CEC), is using questionable tricks to avoid violating the federal 90-10 rule. That measure requires for-profit schools to obtain at least 10 percent of their revenue from sources other than grants and
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The FBI executed a search warrant Friday at The Healthcare Institute, a Memphis for-profit college owned by Tennessee state senator Katrina Robinson (D), according to numerous media reports. The FBI also searched Robinson’s home. Witnesses saw FBI agents removing file cabinets, boxes, and computers from the school. Students told TV channel FOX13 that agents asked
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Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos has trashed two key rules that the Department of Education, during the Obama administration, painstakingly developed to discourage for-profit colleges from deceiving and abusing their own students. With a new lawsuit filed today, advocates for students are now in court fighting to cancel both of the DeVos anti-rules and keep
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