Some words of determination, hope, and gratitude for my colleagues who continue the fight to stop predatory colleges from ripping off taxpayers and ruining students’ lives:

I’ve worked in DC my whole career, and I’ve had, and still have, a lot of different jobs, besides working on higher ed. But working with our coalition of organizations on the issue of predatory colleges is one of the best professional experiences of my life.

It’s a great challenge, about a really critical and under-appreciated social justice and economic issue, and it’s also a great story.

The story has clear victims  — people who struggle and deserve respect for seeking to improve their lives through education, but fall prey to deceptive, abusive colleges.

The story also has clear villains – the people who run the predatory schools, some of them among the most greedy, self-centered people on earth.

And also all the revolving door lobbyists and politicians whose corruption has allowed these abuses to persist – with the ultimate con man, the worst obstacle to progress, who is not only the president of the United States but also the former head of shut-down-for-fraud Trump University.

The struggle has clear goals – to take these crooked people off the education field so we can focus on the real challenges of higher ed.

And there are clear heroes, especially the students and borrowers who have fought for justice, and the whistleblowers who have told the truth, but also the advocates working on their behalf — some of the smartest, most resourceful, most determined, and best colleagues I’ve ever had.

And our coalition effort has achieved much.

We’ve exposed / weakened / shut down a lot of schools through investigations, reporting, advocacy, lawsuits, and work with federal, state, and local law enforcement, as well as through regulations and a few key pieces of legislation.

We’ve reduced the size of the for-profit college industry and driven some investors away from bad companies.

We’ve weakened the deceptive lead generation industry that has sold poor quality programs through blatant deceptions.

We’ve gotten rid of so many bad actors, including many of the publicly traded and really brazen abusive companies.

Think of the awful institutions we helped shut down:

Corinthian  Colleges, which lied to students, accreditors and government, which admitted and took the money and federal aid of an intellectually disabled man who couldn’t read – and put him in a criminal justice program because he wanted to be a police officer.

ITT Tech, which overcharged students for weak outdated programs, while the vain CEO used the state-of-the-art gym installed in his office.

Bridgepoint / Zovio – a company so cynical that a man called me from a golf course in 2011 to say he was listening to  executives of the company mocking the students who attended their Ashford University; at that point there were 70,000 students.

EDMC – bought by Goldman Sachs and an arrogant private equity man and transformed from a once-decent career school into a scam operation.

Dream Center Education Holdings – an effort to keep the EDMC schools alive as fake nonprofits run by for-profit grifters.

FastTrain – a Florida school that used strippers to lure men on the street into enrolling.

Westwood College – which falsely told low income people in Chicago that every time a student was admitted the staff would celebrate, because it was so hard to get in, when in fact the school accepted almost anyone.

CEHE – a deceptive low quality for-profit turned into a fake nonprofit for the benefit of its principal, an arrogant billionaire who has pledged to live to 120.

Florida Career College – a school that used blatant cheating on entrance exams to enroll students in programs, a school that lied and undereducated.

Unfortunately, often the grift has just migrated – from publicly traded to private equity, from for-profit to fake nonprofits and fake state schools, to online program managers and coding bootcamps.

Some of the most abusive and dishonest companies — the University of Phoenix, Perdoceo, Keiser, Adtalem/DeVry, Grand Canyon, Kaplan/Purdue Global, and IEC/UEI have faced penalties but are still around, still fleecing students and taxpayers.

So the challenges continue, but the work has made a difference. Please stay with it. It can be frustrating and demoralizing, but it’s so critical to the future of this country – and to the futures of so many people who deserve a better chance in this country.