Current Events > Education dept. scaling back investigations of fraud at for-profit colleges

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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/education-department-for-profit-colleges.html

Members of a special team at the Education Department that had been investigating widespread abuses by for-profit colleges have been marginalized, reassigned or instructed to focus on other matters, according to current and former employees.

The unwinding of the team has effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked.

During the final months of the Obama administration, the team had expanded to include a dozen or so lawyers and investigators who were looking into advertising, recruitment practices and job placement claims at several institutions, including DeVry Education Group.

The investigation into DeVry ground to a halt early last year. Later, in the summer, Ms. DeVos named Julian Schmoke, a former dean at DeVry, as the teams new supervisor.

Now only three employees work on the team, and their mission has been scaled back to focus on processing student loan forgiveness applications and looking at smaller compliance cases, said the current and former employees, including former members of the team, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from the department.

In addition to DeVry, now known as Adtalem Global Education, investigations into Bridgepoint Education and Career Education Corporation, which also operate large for-profit colleges, went dark.

Former employees of those institutions now work for Ms. DeVos as well, including Robert S. Eitel, her senior counselor, and Diane Auer Jones, a senior adviser on postsecondary education. Last month, Congress confirmed the appointment of a lawyer who provided consulting services to Career Education, Carlos G. Muiz, as the departments general counsel.

The investigative team had been created in 2016 after the collapse of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, which set off a wave of complaints from students about predatory activities at for-profit schools. The institutions had been accused of widespread fraud that involved misrepresenting enrollment benefits, job placement rates and program offerings, which could leave students with huge debts and no degrees.

Elizabeth Hill, a spokeswoman for the Education Department, attributed the reduction of the group to attrition and said that conducting investigations is but one way the investigations team contributes to the departments broad effort to provide oversight. She said that none of the new employees who had previously worked in the for-profit education industry had influenced the units work.

She also said the teams deployment on student loan forgiveness applications was an operational decision that neither points to a curtailment of our school oversight efforts nor indicates a conscious effort to ignore large-scale investigations.

Aaron Ament, a former chief of staff to the office of the departments general counsel who helped create the team under President Barack Obama, said it had been intended to protect students from fraudulent for-profit colleges. Unfortunately, Secretary DeVos seems to think the colleges need protection from their students, said Mr. Ament, who is now president of the National Student Legal Defense Network.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts, also criticized the teams new direction. Ms. DeVos has taken a number of actions to roll back or delay regulations that sought to rein in abuses and predatory practices among for-profit colleges actions that Ms. Warren and other Democrats have said put the industrys interests ahead of those of students.

Maybe the defining goal of this administration is wanting people to get ripped off
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Weird, I just watched the John Oliver video on for profit colleges.
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If only consumers became more responsible about their choices...
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They are destroying this country from the inside out...it's so insane.
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Wonder why Trump would want to protect for profit universities from fraud suits

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Trump doesn't even pretend to hide his conflicts of interest and his supporters seem to think cheating the system for your own benefit at the expense of the masses is a good thing.
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One of my brothers is attending Devry and initially I was worried about it because of their reputation as being for-profit. But he just secured an internship at a world-class technology company as his first internship and he attributed that to the technical skills he learned hands-on at Devry. It's an expensive school but he's happy with it so far. If he grabs another internship or two on the same level as this first one, he'll land a really solid gig as an electronics engineer once he's done with school.

Definitely expensive as fuck, though. But he said that if you put in the leg work to really learn hands-on rather than just coast through for easy grades, it's worth the price tag.

silentwing26x posted...

One of my brothers is attending Devry and initially I was worried about it because of their reputation as being for-profit. But he just secured an internship at a world-class technology company as his first internship and he attributed that to the technical skills he learned hands-on at Devry. It's an expensive school but he's happy with it so far. If he grabs another internship or two on the same level as this first one, he'll land a really solid gig as an electronics engineer once he's done with school.

Definitely expensive as fuck, though. But he said that if you put in the leg work to really learn hands-on rather than just coast through for easy grades, it's worth the price tag.

Your brother could have gotten that same education at virtually any other school for a quarter of the price.

Trump University is going to rise like a phoenix.
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Great - finally my Trump University degree will be worth something instead of employers laughing at my resume and throwing it in the garbage
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Antifar posted...

Maybe the defining goal of this administration is wanting people to get ripped off

maybe the defining goal of the next one should be imprisoning members of this one
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_Rinku_ posted...

silentwing26x posted...

One of my brothers is attending Devry and initially I was worried about it because of their reputation as being for-profit. But he just secured an internship at a world-class technology company as his first internship and he attributed that to the technical skills he learned hands-on at Devry. It's an expensive school but he's happy with it so far. If he grabs another internship or two on the same level as this first one, he'll land a really solid gig as an electronics engineer once he's done with school.

Definitely expensive as fuck, though. But he said that if you put in the leg work to really learn hands-on rather than just coast through for easy grades, it's worth the price tag.

Your brother could have gotten that same education at virtually any other school for a quarter of the price.

Maybe. He was working as a carpenter and wanted to go back to school in evenings / remotely. Devry offered a mixture of those two, and a state of the art lab, not far from where he lives. It's a really convenient schedule, and their career office has connections that can help you get internships / jobs with respected companies.

It would've been harder for him to find a school near by that offers the hands-on training with all that expensive equipment, and night classes, and remote classes.

When he said drain the swamp, he meant drain the obstructionists to make room for more crony capitalism.
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Those schools are good for people who have to work to pay their bills. With my work schedule I couldn't attend a traditional school even if I wanted to.
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ExtremeLuchador posted...

Those schools are good for people who have to work to pay their bills. With my work schedule I couldn't attend a traditional school even if I wanted to.

Yeah, you basically pay for the convenience of how they structure their courses.

Honestly, before my brother landed this internship I was really worried and skeptical about Devry. But now I'm kinda changing my tune. If it keeps treating him this well, it will have been well worth the cost.

Your brother's experience doesn't preclude them from having defrauded others
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Of course Proudclad would be in this topic defending for profit universities.
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silentwing26x posted...

Honestly, before my brother landed this internship I was really worried and skeptical about Devry. But now I'm kinda changing my tune. If it keeps treating him this well, it will have been well worth the cost.

Hold judgement until he actually gains employment though. And exceptions apply to for-profit schools, but it doesn't mean it's the standard outcome. People still attend medical school in the Caribbean and land gigs here, but it doesn't change the fact that they only get around ~50% placement in a residency program, so they're taking a coinflip's chance with med school debt. It's easy for the one who made it to say it was worth it in hindsight.

Then again, maybe the technical fields are different. But my understanding is their high "job placement" stats are because companies owned by these schools give super low-ball offers to new graduates and even if they don't accept because they're ridiculous they can say it was available.
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Soviet_Poland posted...

silentwing26x posted...

Honestly, before my brother landed this internship I was really worried and skeptical about Devry. But now I'm kinda changing my tune. If it keeps treating him this well, it will have been well worth the cost.

Hold judgement until he actually gains employment though. And exceptions apply to for-profit schools, but it doesn't mean it's the standard outcome. People still attend medical school in the Caribbean and land gigs here, but it doesn't change the fact that they only get around ~50% placement in a residency program, so they're taking a coinflip's chance with med school debt. It's easy for the one who made it to say it was worth it in hindsight.

Then again, maybe the technical fields are different. But my understanding is their high "job placement" stats are because companies owned by these schools give super low-ball offers to new graduates and even if they don't accept because they're ridiculous they can say it was available.

Hopefully that doesn't end up being the case for him. But I don't think it will. Once you get one or two good internships, it doesn't even really matter what school you went to tbqh. At least for the various engineering roles the tech companies I'm familiar with are hiring for.

Antifar posted...

Your brother's experience doesn't preclude them from having defrauded others

Don't get me wrong, i'm not defending fraud. If they lied to someone, they should pay off their student loans and offer some compensation. But I was more commenting that they're not all that bad, at least hopefully not.

It is worth expanding the conversation to include the public institutions that saddle teens with $50,000 or more in student loans so they can get worthless gender studies or journalism degrees as well.

silentwing26x posted...

Hopefully that doesn't end up being the case for him. But I don't think it will. Once you get one or two good internships, it doesn't even really matter what school you went to tbqh. At least for the various engineering roles the tech companies I'm familiar with are hiring for.

That's good. I hope he beats the odds then. Or maybe things have shifted over the years and it's not even beating the odds. Either way, good for him.
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"non-profit" universities are almost just as big of a scam these days. sad.
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Soviet_Poland posted...

silentwing26x posted...

Hopefully that doesn't end up being the case for him. But I don't think it will. Once you get one or two good internships, it doesn't even really matter what school you went to tbqh. At least for the various engineering roles the tech companies I'm familiar with are hiring for.

That's good. I hope he beats the odds then. Or maybe things have shifted over the years and it's not even beating the odds. Either way, good for him.

Thanks! Yeah I'll definitely be paying attention to how it goes.