Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos gutted her department’s student aid enforcement unit, which was created during the Obama administration to crack down on predatory abuses and scams by for-profit colleges. Now DeVos has put in charge of college investigations a lawyer who represented for-profit colleges, from a law firm, Cooley, whose clients have included some
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An Indiana federal judge has let the directors of collapsed, disgraced for-profit college ITT Tech off the hook, rejecting claims from the company’s bankruptcy trustee that the board’s failure to fire CEO Kevin Modany breached their fiduciary duties. But U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon rejected Modany’s own effort to escape liability, ruling that
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As White House press secretary, he started off telling us the falsehood that President Trump drew the biggest inaugural crowd ever, then defended Trump’s lie that millions voted fraudulently in 2016, and kept going downhill from there. Seeking his fortune after leaving the administration, Sean Spicer started his own consulting firm, became an advisor to
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A federal judge in Chicago on Monday rejected a motion by the Dream Center Foundation to be dismissed from a lawsuit brought by former students who claim they were deceived by the Illinois Institute of Art. The Dream Center Foundation (DCF), a faith-oriented charitable organization based in Los Angeles, in 2017 acquired the Illinois school,
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I’ve written here before about the shameful practice of many large employers offering a dubious benefit to their employees: “discounted” tuition to overpriced for-profit colleges, some of them schools that have faced numerous law enforcement actions for fraud and deception. I’ve questioned why these employers would want to steer their employees to schools that ruin
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Betsy DeVos has been under pressure from congressional Democrats and others because of evidence that her Department of Education facilitated deceptions against students by a failed predatory college operation, Dream Center Education Holdings. At the same time, she’s taken heat, and been held in contempt by a federal judge, because the Department has illegally pursued
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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the watchdog agency that works for Congress, is investigating Department of Education and Internal Revenue Service oversight of for-profit college conversions to non-profit status. The GAO study was requested last year by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), now the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee; Sen. Patty Murray
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Robyn Smith, a lawyer associated with the National Consumer Law Center and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, was selected by the U.S. Department of Education to represent students in negotiations earlier this year on a basket of new Department regulations affecting college accreditation, online education, and other matters.  The Department heavily stacked the
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