May 23, 2014

Top Donor for House Education Chair is For-Profit College Facing Federal and State Fraud Probes

As reported yesterday by OpenSecrets, Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has no serious opposition in her bid for reelection, yet has received more than $800,000 in campaign contributions. More than half of that money has come from outside North Carolina, much of it from corporate special interests. The biggest industry donating to Foxx, who is chair
Continue Reading >>>

May 6, 2014

Suze Orman Warns Against Private Student Loans, Yet Teaches at University of Phoenix

Last year I reported that Suze Orman had been hired by the University of Phoenix to teach an online personal finance course and had appeared at a Capitol Hill event where she promoted the school, which is the largest for-profit college in the country.  It was difficult to understand how a woman who proclaims herself
Continue Reading >>>

May 5, 2014

Exposed: For-Profit Colleges’ Blueprint for Blocking Obama Regulations

Posted on the website of an accounting firm in Puerto Rico is a revealing PowerPoint presentation dated February 20, 2014, and credited to Steve Gunderson, the CEO of APSCU, the trade association of for-profit colleges. It outlines APSCU’s plan for defeating the Obama Administration’s key regulation aimed at holding for-profit colleges accountable for leaving students
Continue Reading >>>

May 2, 2014

Washington Post Opposes Regulating For-Profit Colleges Without Disclosing Publisher’s Stake In The Industry

graham-weymouth

This week the Washington Post editorialized against President Obama’s “gainful employment” rule, aimed at holding career training programs accountable for leaving students with insurmountable debt, without disclosing that the newspaper’s publisher, Katharine Weymouth, serves on the board of directors of a company that owns for-profit colleges and that is lobbying actively against the rule. An
Continue Reading >>>

April 28, 2014

For-Profit College Offers Students Pizza To Lobby Against Obama Regulation

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 8.19.42 PM

While it storms government offices with high-priced lobbyists, the for-profit college industry also is aiming to flood Washington with cards and letters from their students and staff opposing President Obama’s gainful employment rule. This proposed regulation would, sensibly, cut off federal aid to career education programs that consistently leave students with debts they cannot repay.
Continue Reading >>>

April 28, 2014

For-Profit Colleges Spend Big On Lobbyists to Fight Obama Regulation

Screen Shot 2014-04-26 at 8.13.10 PM

With the May 27 deadline approaching to submit comments to the U.S. Department of Education, big for-profit colleges are pulling out all the stops to gut the Obama Administration’s proposed “gainful employment” rule, which is aimed at curbing predatory career training programs.  Taking some of the $33 billion a year they’ve been getting from taxpayers,
Continue Reading >>>

April 23, 2014

New Trove of Federal Reviews of College Financial Aid Compliance

The U.S. Department of Education has this week posted online reports from its program reviews of colleges receiving federal student aid, including major schools like Georgetown University and the University of Arizona, as well as of controversial for-profit colleges. The purpose of these regular reviews, where Department officials randomly sample student files and other records and meet
Continue Reading >>>

April 9, 2014

Law Enforcement Investigations and Actions Regarding For-Profit Colleges

bridgepoint-ceo-clark

Pending and past federal and state government investigations and actions regarding for-profit colleges Compiled by David Halperin, Attorney, Washington DC       UPDATED 09-15-25 This is a list of pending and past significant federal and state civil and criminal law enforcement investigations of, and actions against, for-profit colleges. It also includes some major investigations
Continue Reading >>>