July 29, 2020

Win For Students, Loss for DeVos Department, on College Accreditor Fight

The U.S. Department of Education’s outside advisory committee, NACIQI, dominated by Republicans, voted 9-2 late this afternoon to reject the Department’s sham proposal, pushed by political appointees of Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos, to punish the accrediting agency Higher Learning Commission. DeVos aides are seeking to penalize HLC over its 2017 decision to suspend accreditation
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July 28, 2020

House Committee: DeVos Aide Diane Jones Repeatedly Misled Congress

A report that the House Education and Labor Committee released this afternoon provides fresh evidence to support what has been clear for a long time: Betsy DeVos’s top higher education aide, Acting Deputy Under Secretary of Education Diane Auer Jones, has repeatedly made false statements to Congress regarding her role in the debacle over Dream
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February 29, 2020

DeVos Fills Sole Student Slot on Outside Advisory Panel With A Former Aide

Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos has appointed, as the sole student representative on a key Department of Education outside advisory committee, a Michigan law student who until recently worked at the Department as a confidential assistant to DeVos’s top higher education aide, Diane Auer Jones. The advisory body, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality
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September 30, 2019

CFPB Probes, Rebukes Controversial College Operator CEHE

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is investigating student loan practices at the college chain operator Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which already has been facing law enforcement actions by the U.S. Justice Department and the Colorado attorney general. Filings posted on the CFPB website show that the controversial college operator this spring
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September 6, 2019

Trump-DeVos-Jones Rollbacks Allow Scam Artists to Rip Off Students & Taxpayers

One more thought on this week’s Capitol Forum report on abuses at Career Education Corp. under CEO Todd Nelson, last week’s FTC action against CEC, and treatment of for-profit colleges under Donald Trump and his education secretary, Betsy DeVos. Diane Auer Jones, the former CEC senior executive who is now DeVos’s top higher education aide,
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July 23, 2019

House Committee Will Question DeVos Aides Over Dream Center Deceptions

House Education and Labor Committee chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) has just raised the stakes in the battle over Betsy DeVos’s coddling of predatory for-profit colleges, sending a letter to the Trump Secretary of Education demanding that some of her top aides submit to transcribed interviews with the committee regarding the Department’s handling of the collapsed
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June 10, 2019

Trump Administration Cancels Meetings That Pro-Student Groups Sought on DeVos Rules

The Trump White House today notified student advocacy organizations that it was cancelling or refusing to schedule meetings to discuss the Department of Education’s new rules that relax accountability for colleges and college accreditors. The Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs sent emails to the Center for American Progress, the
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June 9, 2019

In NY Times, DeVos Aide Claims She Blew Whistle on Her For-Profit College

A New York Times article published this evening includes a tantalizing claim from Diane Auer Jones, Betsy DeVos’s top higher education aide: that she blew the whistle on for-profit Career Education Corp. (CECO), where she worked from 2010 to 2015 as senior vice president. The Times piece reports, referencing Jones, “She was the one who reported
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