I’m testifying today before the House Oversight Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy about the for-profit college industry and how it has been addressed by the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary Betsy DeVos. Other witnesses at the hearing will include Acting Under Secretary Diane Auer Jones, who is DeVos’s top higher education aide. You
Continue Reading >>>

The Arizona board in charge of regulating for-profit colleges in the state has unanimously rejected the application of Steve Wozniak’s Woz U to renew its license to operate. In doing so, members of the board, many of whom are associated with for-profit schools, and which has generally been supportive of for-profit schools, cited the fact
Continue Reading >>>

Months after a hushed-up dismissal of its lawsuit against the Betsy DeVos Department of Education, the college chains operated by the Center for Excellence in Higher Education face new sanctions from their accreditor, ACCSC. By notice dated May 2, ACCSC renewed accreditation for two years for CEHE’s CollegeAmerica schools, but in a letter dated the
Continue Reading >>>

Faced with a roomful of Democrats, now in control of the House of Representatives, who questioned her hard about the Department of Education’s failures to follow the law, help students, or prevent ugly collapses of bad-acting for-profit college chains, Secretary Betsy DeVos took a page from her boss, Donald Trump: She repeatedly blamed Barack Obama’s
Continue Reading >>>

Regarding the recent epidemic of for-profit college closures, Steve Gunderson, the chief lobbyist for that industry, has taken his shamelessness to new heights — brazenly suggesting that the shuttered schools have no connection to his lobby group, CECU, when he knows full well that they used to be members, and mischaracterizing industry critics’ views on
Continue Reading >>>

Just before Christmas, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which operates CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager College, and Independence University, dismissed its lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education, which had, in the final year of the Obama administration, refused to recognize the company’s schools as non-profit for purposes of federal regulations; the Department under Obama had
Continue Reading >>>

While Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos and her lieutenants have worked to free the worst-behaving predatory colleges from all meaningful accountability rules, they also have spectacularly mismanaged the affairs of schools that have faltered. Exhibit A, in court right now, are the three chains of schools — the Art Institutes, Argosy University, and South University
Continue Reading >>>

While some predatory college chain operations, like Dream Center/EDMC, Education Corp. of America, and Vatterott, have been collapsing under the weight of abuses and mismanagement, other for-profits are now bragging to Wall Street investors that boom times are back. Two of the most prominent examples — Grand Canyon University and Career Education Corp. — have
Continue Reading >>>