July 31, 2020

For-Profit College Group Warns Members They Are Being Targeted By High-Pressure Scam

Last week, the for-profit college lobby group CECU sent a message to its members entitled, “EMAIL SCAM ALERT.” It warns, “It has come to our attention that there is an email scam going around impersonating CECU and some members of the Board of Directors. If you have received an email requesting ‘gift cards for donation
Continue Reading >>>

July 29, 2020

Win For Students, Loss for DeVos Department, on College Accreditor Fight

The U.S. Department of Education’s outside advisory committee, NACIQI, dominated by Republicans, voted 9-2 late this afternoon to reject the Department’s sham proposal, pushed by political appointees of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, to punish the accrediting agency Higher Learning Commission. DeVos aides are seeking to penalize HLC over its 2017 decision to suspend accreditation
Continue Reading >>>

July 29, 2020

DeVos Advisory Panel Should Not Punish Accreditor Over Education Department’s Own Abuses

Today, I am one of the public commenters scheduled to address the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) regarding the Department’s effort to discipline one of its recognized college accreditors, Higher Learning Commission. Here, roughly, is what I plan to say: In April 2018, two employees of Dream Center
Continue Reading >>>

July 28, 2020

House Committee: DeVos Aide Diane Jones Repeatedly Misled Congress

A report that the House Education and Labor Committee released this afternoon provides fresh evidence to support what has been clear for a long time: Betsy DeVos’s top higher education aide, Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Education Diane Auer Jones, has repeatedly made false statements to Congress regarding her role in the debacle over Dream
Continue Reading >>>

July 21, 2020

COVID College Cons – Bad Education Deals Sold in the Pandemic

This article was written by Kate Manning Kennedy, senior advisor at the Project on Predatory Student Lending, and Michelle Wang, an intern at the project. It is part of a series, produced by Republic Report and the Project on Predatory Student Lending (part of Harvard Law School’s Legal Services Center) — COVID College Cons.  This piece looks at some of
Continue Reading >>>

July 20, 2020

For-Profit Colleges Race To Block Students From Suing Them

Donald Trump and his education secretary Betsy DeVos, over the objections of bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, recently rewrote a key federal regulation so that going forward it will be almost impossible for former students who were deceived and ripped off by their colleges to have their federal loans cancelled, even though a
Continue Reading >>>

July 15, 2020

22 States Sue DeVos to Overturn Anti-Student Rule

The attorneys general of 22 states and the District of Columbia today sued Betsy DeVos over the Trump administration’s new borrower defense rule, a regulation that would make it virtually impossible for defrauded students to get their federal loan obligations cancelled, even though a federal statute provides that right. The lawsuit, filed in federal court
Continue Reading >>>

July 14, 2020

More Proof of DeVos Department Deception in DCEH Debacle

We reported last week that Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education is pursuing penalties against Higher Learning Commission (HLC) over that agency’s 2017 action to suspend accreditation of two career college campuses newly acquired by Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH). The DeVos move appears aimed at deflecting evidence that the Department engaged in an improper effort
Continue Reading >>>