Republican consultant Frank Luntz, a master of words, made clear in a 2002 GOP strategy memo how conservatives would address the growing threat of climate change: They would simply deny it was happening. According to the memo: The scientific debate remains open. Voters believe that there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community.
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Last year, the annual convention of owners and executives of for-profit colleges (University of Phoenix, The Art Institutes, Kaplan, etc.), held in Las Vegas, featured paid speakers George W. Bush and Michelle Rhee, and, for entertainment, a fake knockoff version of Creedence Clearwater Revival. After a year in which the truth about their shoddy practices finally sent
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Far too often in Washington, policy decisions are influenced by big money — wealthy corporations spend millions on lobbying, public relations, and campaign contributions to get their way. Big money helps explain why your cell phone and cable TV bills are so expensive, why small investors are still unprotected from Wall Street abuses, why taxpayers
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In the past two years, as the public has come to recognize that many for-profit colleges have been ripping off taxpayers and ruining students’ lives, enrollments have declined, and the once-mighty industry has gone into a tailspin. A number of schools, such as American Career Institute and ATI have abruptly shut down many or all of their campuses,
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Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) yesterday paraphrased a well-known quote about the Holocaust to describe the Obama Administration’s regulation of for-profit colleges. Foxx, who has staunchly defended the for-profit college industry despite its blatant record of abusing students and ripping off taxpayers, apparently didn’t mention in her remarks that she is one of Congress’s biggest recipients
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A for-profit college suddenly shut down all its campuses last week, leaving Massachusetts and Maryland students out in the cold.  The owner of the company, American Career Institute (ACI), told me today that the business is closed for good, because its lenders forced it to shut.  Although we don’t know all the facts yet, ACI’s abrupt
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Many of America’s big for-profit colleges spend more on advertising and high-pressure recruiting than they do on educating students — a key reason why so many of their students drop out and end up with insurmountable debt. If you have a TV or a computer — and you do — then you are probably bombarded
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Eight U.S. Senators today sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan calling on him to investigate tactics used by some major for-profit colleges to circumvent rules aimed at reducing student loan defaults.  A report issued in July by Senator Tom Harkin’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee documented that several big for-profit
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