Education Corporation of America (ECA), a collapsed for-profit college operation that once ran several chains of career schools spread across 70 campuses, has agreed to pay $28 million to settle claims that it shut down its campuses abruptly, without a teach-out plan that would give students fair opportunities to continue their studies elsewhere. The case
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Arthur Keiser, billionaire operator of three Florida-based career college chains, asserts in an article published this week, “There’s no evidence of misconduct” at his schools. That claim, by one of the most powerful figures in the for-profit college industry, is demonstrably false. In reality, there is extensive evidence of misconduct at schools owned or operated
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  This week the U.S. Department of Education held its semi-annual meeting of NACIQI, the Department’s outside advisory committee of higher education experts charged with reviewing the performance of the private accrediting agencies that oversee quality at colleges and universities. Due to other commitments, I wasn’t able to observe the entire meeting, but here is some
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Tomorrow I’m scheduled to present brief comments (3 minutes max allowed) at a meeting of NACIQI, the U.S. Department of Education’s advisory committee charged with reviewing the performance of the private accrediting agencies that oversee quality at colleges and universities. Here’s what I plan to say: Many students say a school’s status as accredited, and
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In recent years, when given an opportunity to provide brief comments at meetings of the U.S. Department of Education’s outside advisory committee overseeing college accreditors, NACIQI, I have repeatedly argued that the Department, as part of evaluating accreditors, should be taking notice of any schools under a given accreditor that have been exposed for engaging
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Federal prosecutors in Miami announced Wednesday that they had charged 25 people — including the owners of South Florida for-profit colleges — with selling fraudulent nursing degree diplomas and transcripts to people seeking licenses and jobs as nurses. Collectively, the defendants charged in federal documents facilitated the distribution of more than 7,600 fake nursing diplomas
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The Arkansas Times revealed Tuesday that a non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Arkansas System has been in talks about acquiring the University of Phoenix, long one of the country’s largest for-profit colleges, from that school’s current private equity owners. A spokesman for the University of Arkansas System acknowledged to the news outlet that
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The University of Phoenix has been running a national advertising campaign that suggests to prospective students that the school is a public, state-operated institution, when in fact is a private, for-profit operation.  The ads, therefore, seem to violate a 2019 settlement agreement with the Federal Trade Commission in which the school’s owners agreed that their
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