Donald Trump’s public contemplation of picking ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to be U.S. Secretary of State raises a range of controversies, including Tillerson’s dealmaking with Russia and close ties to Vladimir Putin. It also intensifies attention on ExxonMobil’s escalating court battle with the attorneys general of New York and Massachusetts over the question of whether the company improperly
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U.S. Secretary of Education John King today took the final step in the government de-recognizing the troubled Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). King concluded that ACICS has “exhibited a profound lack of compliance” with its responsibilities as an accreditor. King’s decision means that colleges accredited by ACICS will have to find new accreditors if they
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The U.S. Department of Education today approved the application of the Apollo Education Group, owner of the University of Phoenix, to convert from being a publicly-traded company to one owned by private equity firms and still keep its eligibility for federal student grants and loans. But in a letter, the Department, expressly citing the multiple
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Senate Armed Services Committee chairman John McCain (R-AZ) held a hearing last week for the express purpose of attacking the Defense Department’s 2015 decision to temporarily ban the for-profit University of Phoenix from recruiting U.S. military service members. Even though the Pentagon’s action was based on significant evidence that the University of Phoenix had engaged in
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As eight years of zigzagging but ultimately valiant efforts by the Obama administration to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges comes to a close, new documents, released to us under the Freedom of Information Act, shed light on a key chapter in that saga: The 2015 demise of one of the most abusive
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A Texas federal judge’s recent order — that the attorneys general of Massachusetts and New York must submit to questioning by lawyers for ExxonMobil about why they are investigating the company — is highly unusual and unwarranted, as is the underlying lawsuit brought by ExxonMobil against the prosecutors. If upheld, this approach could turn the
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