The U.S. Department of Education announced this morning that it is delaying a decision on renewing approval of the Accrediting Commission on Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), one of the outside accrediting bodies charged with evaluating the educational quality of colleges. Department recognition is crucial for accreditors, because without it, schools accredited by an agency
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Some critics of wealthy, politically-connected for-profit college baron Arthur Keiser made and sent me this video laying out concerns about Keiser’s record — predatory practices, law enforcement troubles, conflicts of interest  (which we have written about here before). The video questions whether Keiser should remain the chair of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory
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This week, American Public University System (APUS), whose name obscures the fact that it is a for-profit college, announced it had signed an agreement with the chancellor’s office of the California Community Colleges (CCC) system that will enable graduates of these community colleges “to seamlessly transfer to APUS as a junior – with no loss
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When a for-profit college chain abruptly closes, locking out its students and leaving their futures in doubt, the industry is often quick to disavow the dead school as a wayward abuser, an outlier. In reality, though, many of the surviving for-profit college chains use the same predatory playbook as the collapsed ones, and leaders of
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Rising to the challenge of protecting America’s students from deceptive predatory colleges, the U.S. Department of Education announced today a major upgrade to its enforcement and investigative operation. Kristen Donoghue, who served as enforcement director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration, was named the Department’s chief enforcement officer, heading a revived
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The Federal Trade Commission this morning announced a new initiative to combat deceptive and unfair practices in the for-profit higher education industry. At a press conference, FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra and Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine explained that the commission had voted to exercise long-unused powers to warn for-profit colleges against making misrepresentations
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A report out today from NPR highlights the pernicious role that the Wall Street Journal has played in spreading false attacks and innuendoes, invented by the for-profit college industry, on former Obama Department of Education official Robert Shireman. The new article, by David Folkenflik, NPR’s media reporter, details misleading aspects of Wall Street Journal reports
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A panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals has upheld part, but also reversed part, of a trial judge’s $3 million verdict against the predatory college operation Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), its now-shuttered schools, and its principal executives, Carl Barney and Eric Juhlin. The panel ordered a new trial on claims that
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