Today, nine Senators, led by Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), called on the U.S. Department of Education to cut off federal student aid to colleges and universities that bar their students from going to court to pursue claims against their schools. Addressing the same issue, some of the negotiators participating in the Department’s
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Apparently for the first time ever, the U.S. Supreme Court last night, by a 5-4 vote, blocked a federal regulation from taking effect while that rule was still up for review in a federal appeals court. The unprecedented maneuver by the Court’s five-Justice conservative majority stays implementation of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. That
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Last week the U.S. Department of Education took the rare step of cutting off federal student aid to two for-profit college chains, each accused of deceiving the Department and their own students. The allegations against the schools, while similar to abuses exposed at other schools in the past, are startling. But what’s also interesting is
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Last spring, when for-profit Corinthian Colleges abruptly shut down under the weight of allegations of deceptive acts, Corinthian students had a choice under U.S. Department of Education rules: transfer to another school, or receive a “closed school discharge,” which would free them from the obligation of repaying the student loans they had incurred at the
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Today, the University of Phoenix’s owner, Apollo Education Group, announced a $1.1 billion deal to be acquired by a consortium of investors including Apollo Global Management (no relation) and the Vistria Group, a private equity firm that includes Tony Miller, who was Deputy Secretary of Education under President Obama from 2009-2013. Miller would become Chairman of the Apollo
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Credit Suisse got the attention of Wall Street last week when it issued a report recommending that investors buy shares in one of the largest for-profit college companies, DeVry Education Group. The report came less than a week after the Federal Trade Commission sued DeVry for allegedly misleading students about job placement rates and salaries for the school’s graduates,
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Last week, troubled for-profit college company ITT Tech settled a series of lawsuits brought by shareholders that charged ITT with various securities law violations.  Under the agreement, approved preliminarily by Manhattan federal judge J. Paul Oetken on Jan. 29 but still subject to objections by investors, ITT will pay lawyers for the plaintiffs $1.1 million and commit
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In a well-publicized 2012 action, the attorneys general of 20 U.S. states stopped a company called QuinStreet from using a military-branded website, GIBill.com, to steer American veterans to controversial for-profit colleges. But it turns out that marketers, including QuinStreet itself, have continued to engage in similar practices since then. Websites such as Military.com and GIJobs.com still push
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