Although President Donald J. Trump last month signed an executive order directing Secretary of Education Linda McMahon “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” and although DOGE efforts and layoffs have cut the Department staff by half, the Department announced
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Editor’s Note: This piece highlights the findings of Cut Short, a new, comprehensive investigation by think tank New America into the troubling realities of cosmetology education. The full report unpacks how for-profit beauty schools exploit federal financial aid, burdening students with debt while failing to provide a viable path to financial stability. In the fall
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We’ve had the rule of law in this country since 1776, when the colonies declared independence from King George III of England. Our democracy has been deeply flawed in many ways since then. But we’ve never gone as backward, and downward, as we have since inauguration day 2025. We’re right at the point of authoritarianism
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Twenty-one Democratic state attorneys general sued President Trump and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon today, 48 hours after the Department of Education announced it was firing more than 1,300 employees, which, combined with previously Trump-Musk efforts to cull the staff, reduced the employee roster to less than half of the 4000+ person team that was
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Many top for-profit college industry owners supported Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House. They had benefitted when, during Trump’s first term, his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, largely ended federal regulatory and enforcement efforts to hold for-profit schools accountable for deceiving students and ripping off taxpayers. But some industry barons, having contributed to
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Bloomberg reports that the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Vistria Group are considering a sale or an initial public offering for the for-profit school they jointly own, the University of Phoenix. Unnamed sources told Bloomberg an IPO could occur as soon as the third quarter of 2025. For the past two years, Phoenix’s
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That school, part of the prominent Paul Mitchell beauty chain, had violated the rules of the accreditor, the National Accrediting Commission of Cosmetology Arts and Sciences, requiring that institutions maintain sound finances. Paul Mitchell The School Knoxville needed accreditation to survive. Federal law prohibits students from using federal financial aid like Pell Grants at unaccredited
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Today I presented brief comments at a meeting of NACIQI, the U.S. Department of Education’s advisory committee charged with reviewing the performance of the private accrediting agencies that oversee quality and integrity at American colleges and universities. With only three minutes allowed for my comments, I delivered a slightly shorter version of the remarks below:
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