A jury trial is set to begin Tuesday in federal district court in Alexandria, VA, of a long-standing whistleblower lawsuit filed by former U.S. Department of Education civil servant Jon Oberg against the student lender and collection agency Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA). This case may at last provide a public verdict regarding the notorious
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This was the week that the President of the United States told voters to choose an accused pedophile and disgraceful bigot to be Alabama’s next U.S. senator. Trump can’t sink any lower.  Or can he? I’ll be letting you know next week. Since 2017, Republic Report‘s “Trump Terrible 10” has ranked the week’s 10 most disgraceful figures
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A tangled web of for-profit connections adds up to more bad news for struggling students. For-profit college chain Career Education Corporation (CEC) announced last week that William D. Hansen has joined the company’s board of directors. It’s a disturbing validation by Hansen, a former top Department of Education official under George W. Bush, of a predatory
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I got a call from Bernie Bernstein of the Washington Post, offering me $300 to keep writing this feature. I was caught off-guard and blurted that I would probably still write it even without the money. I really regret that. But I’m thankful this week that we’re at 10 months out of 48 and we
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The U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos this week began the process of dismantling the rules issued under President Obama to constrain the predatory abuses of for-profit colleges. At the end of the troubling first day of what’s called negotiated rulemaking, members of the public were given an opportunity to speak. I was
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Staff of the U.S. Department of Education this morning refused to let attendees live-stream its negotiated rulemaking meeting, the first in a series of sessions where the Trump-DeVos department is aiming to roll back Obama-era rules to protect students and taxpayers from predatory practices by for-profit colleges. It then actively resisted proposals from negotiators representing
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Since 2017, Republic Report‘s “Trump Terrible 10” has ranked the week’s 10 most disgraceful figures in Trump world. Between Bob Mueller’s expanding Russiagate probe, and the fine people who cast their ballots last Tuesday against the ugliness of this presidency, Trump world is finally taking a beating. But there’s a long, long way to go, and meanwhile
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Betsy DeVos has turned her back on students hurt by predatory colleges. Look what happens when accountability is weak. When I called for-profit Quest College this week and asked to speak with Larry Earle, the receptionist insisted there was no one to reach there by that name. But that wasn’t true. Lawrence Earle, the for-profit
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