Federal agencies have this morning launched a new online complaint system where veterans, service members, and their families can report on problems with colleges and universities receiving federal education aid. As numerous investigations have revealed and President Obama has noted, for-profit colleges have engaged in widespread abuses of vets and military families. The new complaint
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In the wake of the April 2103 West, Texas, chemical plant explosion, which killed 15 people and injured 160 more, President Obama issued an executive order directing federal agencies to improve the safety of our industrial chemical plants.  Right now, a working group of federal officials is conducting “listening sessions” around the country to hear
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In the past five years Americans have become increasingly aware that many for-profit colleges — the career training schools that advertise all over TV, the Internet, and city buses — are engaged in systematic fraud. These schools have been caught luring students with false promises about the cost of programs and the value of degrees
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This morning the U.S. Department of Education convenes what may finally be the last session of its negotiated rulemaking on a proposed “gainful employment” rule, a measure aimed at cutting off federal aid to career college programs that fail to train students to earn a decent living.  The latest draft regulation from the Department would
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This morning, in a packed room on the 8th floor of a K Street building, the U.S. Department of Education resumes talks in pursuit of a “gainful employment” rule aimed at penalizing for-profit colleges that leave students deep in debt and without decent paying jobs. It’s called a “negotiated rulemaking,” bringing together representatives of schools, students,
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The Federal Trade Commission may be ready to get tough with America’s for-profit colleges. That makes sense. The agency’s core mission is “to prevent business practices that are anticompetitive or deceptive or unfair to consumers.”  The business model of many for-profit colleges is built on deception — if students actually had all the relevant information,
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On Friday, prosecutors in Miami charged the politically-connected CEO of for-profit Dade Medical College, Ernesto Perez, with the felony charge of providing false information through a sworn statement, plus two misdemeanor counts of perjury. When Perez was named to Florida’s Commission on Independent Education — a panel charged with overseeing schools like his — he omitted
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After several years of startling revelations about its predatory abuses of students, the for-profit college industry faces growing skepticism from the public. Thousands of students across the country have complained that they were deceived by for-profit college recruiters about the cost of programs, the quality of programs, and the value of  for-profit degrees in the
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