Today the Department of Education’s advisory committee on higher education, NACIQI, is considering for the second time in five years whether the Department should eliminate the accrediting body ACICS as a gatekeeper for colleges’ access to federal student grants and loans. It was a dramatic development in 2016 when the same committee — consisting of
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The Biden Department of Education has hired two lawyers who recently worked at the DC-mega law firm WilmerHale, amid other signs of that firm’s increasing influence over matters in the new administration. The deep penetration of the Biden-Harris administration by WilmerHale, which has repeatedly represented, among many other special interests, predatory for-profit colleges, comes as
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  Joe Biden, who pledged to get tough on predatory for-profit colleges, has just hired another person for a high-level job — at least the third so far — who previously worked for terrible, abusive for-profit schools. Alicia O’Brien, as the American Prospect reported today, has been named senior counsel and special assistant to the
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Republic Report has obtained the second annual report of the lawyer hired to monitor the compliance of giant for-profit college company Perdoceo with its January 2019 $494 million settlement with 48  state attorneys general, plus the District of Columbia. The AGs alleged that the company engaged in widespread deceptive practices against students. For the second
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Reflecting this Sunday, we noticed that recently a number of disclosures in Republic Report were rapidly followed by relevant actions undertaken by the targets of our articles — maybe minor, mostly cosmetic changes, but some progress. Were our targets feeling heat, or were these just coincidences? You decide. 1. We reported Friday that ultra-wealthy for-profit
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Never forget we elected a criminal as president. Let’s never do that again.

There is ample evidence that controversial, ultra-wealthy for-profit college owner Arthur Keiser, a powerful figure in business and politics, has obtained dominant influence over tiny St. Andrews University, a non-profit liberal arts school in southern North Carolina. Florida-based Keiser University, the largest institution that Arthur Keiser controls, started making multi-million dollar contributions to St. Andrews
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Yesterday, I was lucky to moderate a panel, hosted by the University of San Diego, on the subject “How Advocates Can Work with the Media to Effect Change and Protect Postsecondary Students.”   The panel included two journalists, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel of the Washington Post and Erica Green of the New York Times, plus two communications officials,
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