The big for-profit colleges were back in court in Washington again this morning, arguing to a federal judge that the Obama Administration did not have the power to subject them to even the most minimal standards of accountability for leaving their students with overwhelming debt. Despite the mountain of evidence that many for-profit colleges have engaged in predatory behavior
Continue Reading >>>

Former Congressman Vin Weber (R-MN) is an advisor to the unofficial presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, as both Weber and the Bush camp have confirmed. Weber recently told Fox News, “I think that Governor Bush is right on track in terms of how he’s been thinking about this potential race and when he needs to get
Continue Reading >>>

Yesterday, Corinthian Colleges, one of the worst-behaving for-profit college companies, capped its dramatic collapse by filing for bankruptcy. A business that was getting as much as $1.4 billion a year in federal aid now has claimed in court that it has just $19 million in assets, but $143 million in liabilities. So who is owed all
Continue Reading >>>

A blockbuster, year-in-the-making investigative series about the for-profit college industry appears online in the Miami Herald today, and, as industry analysts at BMO Capital Markets predicted earlier this week, “Obviously, this is not going to portray the industry in a positive light.” It doesn’t, but that’s because the industry practices and conduct that the Herald found are simply abominable. (I have studied
Continue Reading >>>

An education technology executive who previously worked with the for-profit college industry told me last year, “The biggest misconception about for-profits is that they are schools. They are call centers that happen to have a school built around it.” That is a deadly accurate insight. Numerous federal and state law enforcement investigations, and media investigations,
Continue Reading >>>

Parroting a familiar talking point by bad actors in the for-profit college industry, Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO), appeared last week to blame students for their high student loan burdens. After questioning Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday about regulations aimed at for-profit colleges, Blunt, a member of the Senate
Continue Reading >>>

The 100-plus former students of for-profit Corinthian Colleges who have boldly asserted that they won’t pay back their student loans have garnered widespread attention and provided a powerful jolt to the debates about predatory colleges and our nation’s mounting student debt. A measure of the students’ impact is the meeting they were able to obtain last
Continue Reading >>>

Late last week, hundreds of organizations and people sent a letter to President Obama warning that his administration is running of time to act on an issue long-identified by the President as essential to our national security and public safety: protecting our people from the dangers of accidents or deliberate attacks at U.S. chemical plants.
Continue Reading >>>