Bradley Adams, the chief operating officer of South College and the lead negotiator for the for-profit college industry in this week’s Department of Education rule-making meetings, has criticized proposed rules that would hold career college programs more accountable for deceiving students and burying them in debt. Predictably, Adams has repeated the industry’s mantra that all
Continue Reading >>>

  Today, the U.S. Department of Education begins a new round of negotiation sessions with a group of higher education stakeholders as the start of a process of creating new rules to hold colleges accountable for predatory abuses. The Department last week released a series of papers aimed at starting debate on issues related to
Continue Reading >>>

  I needed a COVID test and finally found one at a church by the airport. Only nine cars ahead of me, but it was moving kinda slow because only one person was doing all the work. This young woman was smart and diligent, doing her best. She looked at my form and said, “You
Continue Reading >>>

As we approach the end of 2021, here are some higher education stories that I wish I had more time to pursue now. Some of them I’ve dug into pretty deeply already, while others I haven’t done much with yet. If you have info on these matters, please let me know. Or investigate them yourself.
Continue Reading >>>

In recent weeks, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) — whose members are financial aid professionals from colleges and universities across the country — has lent its prestige to supporting policy positions similar to views being pushed by the for-profit college industry, a higher education sector where many schools offer a toxic
Continue Reading >>>

Within the Build Back Better social spending bill on Capitol Hill is a provision that increases the maximum annual federal Pell grant for college students, currently $6,495, by $550. The measure excludes for-profit colleges from that modest increase. A decade of government and media investigations have shown that many for-profit colleges have offered a toxic
Continue Reading >>>

The Biden Administration is urging a federal judge to keep in effect, for now, a rule, issued by Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, that weakened the power of the U.S. Department of Education to curb abuses by for-profit colleges. The 2019 DeVos rule was basically a one-line cancellation of a 2014 Obama administration rule called
Continue Reading >>>

California’s attorney general this week began presenting evidence in his office’s long-awaited fraud trial against for-profit Ashford University. In the case, filed in 2017, the state alleges that Ashford engaged in unfair and fraudulent business practices, with school recruiters fueled by a “boiler room” culture that demanded they meet enrollment quotas. The recruiters, in turn,
Continue Reading >>>