The unprecedented Powerball jackpot is supposed to bestow extraordinary riches upon the long-awaited winners. But did you know that each of the three winners will receive less over a 29-year payout than ten U.S. for-profit college companies receive from your tax dollars every single year?  Worse, seven of those ten colleges have been under investigation in recent
Continue Reading >>>

Rohit Chopra, whose principled and determined leadership helped make the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau a strong force in addressing the abuses of predatory for-profit colleges, has joined the U.S. Department of Education as a senior adviser. Chopra is working directly for Under Secretary Ted Mitchell, focusing on protections for students, analysis of financial capacity and
Continue Reading >>>

With Donald Graham yielding to his son-in-law the CEO spot at his company, which owns for-profit Kaplan University, and with and the University of Phoenix this week putting itself up for sale, perhaps to private equity investors closely tied to President Obama (see below), where is the stability in the leadership of America’s large predatory for-profit colleges?
Continue Reading >>>

The Republican ex-congressman who now works as the chief lobbyist for the troubled for-profit college industry has ushered in the new year with an email asking for-profit college owners to finance a legal brief aimed at limiting the legal risk of companies in fraud cases.  The amount that Steve Gunderson, CEO of the industry trade
Continue Reading >>>

Last week, at a critical point in the Paris negotiations on global climate change, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States would commit $800 million annually to help developing nations adapt to a warming climate and move to cleaner energy.  $800 million doubled the prior U.S. pledge, and the announcement may have
Continue Reading >>>

After settling multiple law enforcement investigations this month on absurdly favorable terms, troubled for-profit college company Education Management Corp. (EDMC) may be on the verge of getting a sweetheart deal from Congress — a deal that could compound the harms that the company already has caused to students and taxpayers. A provision in the highway bill
Continue Reading >>>

Might I humbly suggest we embrace right-wing spindoctor turned corporate think tanker Marc Morano’s latest project Climate Hustle as a welcome escape from reality? It could be the start a whole new genre of film called climate change escapism. Maybe I’m getting soft in my old age, but instead of my expected rant about how Marc Morano and
Continue Reading >>>

On Tuesday, a federal jury in Miami convicted Alejandro Amor, the owner of shut-down FastTrain College, of theft and conspiracy. Amor gained notoriety when it was disclosed that FastTrain, a for-profit college, used strippers to recruit students, but the offense for which he now faces a long prison sentence was enrolling, and cashing federal financial aid checks for, some
Continue Reading >>>