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
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April 28, 2014

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

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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,
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February 22, 2014

WOW: You Won’t Believe What This For-Profit College Lobbyist Just Said (and Did)!

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Steve Gunderson, the former congressman (R-WI) who heads APSCU, the lobbying group for America’s for-profit colleges, seems to be getting desperate. The industry he represents is seeking once again to block the Obama Administration from issuing a “gainful employment” rule that would, eventually, cut off federal student aid to career training schools that consistently leave
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October 15, 2013

Who Owns The Awful Corinthian Colleges? Wells Fargo, Marc Morial, Pension Funds

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Last Thursday, California’s attorney general, Kamala Harris, sued Corinthian Colleges, one of the country’s biggest — and worst — for-profit college companies, for “false and predatory advertising, intentional misrepresentations to students, securities fraud and unlawful use of military seals in advertisements.” Harris’s lawsuit claims that Corinthian, which operates the schools Heald, Everest, and Wyotech, deceived prospective students, investors, and
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August 6, 2013

Bezos’s Purchase of the Post Leaves Graham with Kaplan For-Profit College

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Among the many questions raised by Jeff Bezos’s purchase of the Washington Post newspaper is: What will become of the rest of the old Washington Post Company, publicly traded and run by the Graham family? The fact is that the Post Company was already dominated, in several respects, by its lucrative Kaplan education subsidiary, which
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May 30, 2013

What I Just Told the Obama Administration About For-Profit Colleges

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The U.S. Department of Education is now engaged in a series of public hearings on higher education issues, including reforms to curb the abuses of predatory for-profit colleges. It is also accepting written comments from the public.  I attended the opening hearing last week in Washington, DC, and I tweeted (May 21) about the powerful presentations
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April 15, 2013

Gainful Employment Rule for For-Profit Colleges: Eminently Fixable, Eminently Necessary

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The U.S. Department of Education announced this morning that it will conduct new hearings and rulemaking proceedings on a range of higher education issues, including the contested “gainful employment” rule, which is aimed at curbing the abuses of predatory for-profit colleges. Last month, a federal judge delivered his second blow in less than a year to the gainful
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March 22, 2013

Did For-Profit College EDMC Merge Canadian and U.S. Campuses to Evade The Law?

The owners of America’s big for-profit colleges have developed a big bag of tricks to keep tens of billions of federal dollars flowing their way, regardless of the bad consequences for students and taxpayers.  Every time we think we’ve seen it all, a new brazen tactic emerges. Here’s the latest: The nation’s second largest for-profit
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