University of Phoenix Reportedly Considering Public Offering or New Buyer (David Halperin)

Bloomberg reports that the private equity firms Apollo Global Management and Vistria Group are considering a sale or an initial public offering for the for-profit school they jointly own, the University of Phoenix. Unnamed sources told Bloomberg an IPO could occur as soon as the third quarter of 2025.

For the past two years, Phoenix’s owners have been in talks with the University of Idaho about the state university acquiring the for-profit school. While U of Idaho President C. Scott Green has touted the deal as a revenue raiser and step into the future, the sale has bogged down amid concerns by legislators and others in the state. Last June, the two sides agreed to continue negotiations but that Phoenix’s owners could talk with other potential suitors.

The leak to Bloomberg may be a sign that Phoenix’s owners are ready to move on. But it could instead be a bluff aimed at fooling Green, a self-styled dealmaker, into revitalizing efforts to buy the school.

Green’s plan has been thwarted again and again, with negative votes in the Idaho legislature, a successful court challenge by the state’s attorney general, criticism from the state treasurer, and sharp scrutiny from news outlets in the state.

The Green school deal has assumed that operation of Phoenix would bring millions in new revenue to fund his university. But it ignores that running a for-profit college, one that has repeatedly gotten in trouble with law enforcement for deceiving students, would be a tremendous challenge: If Green pushed to end Phoenix’s predatory practices and improve student outcomes, it probably would start losing money, because predatory practices, coupled with high prices and low spending on education, have made up the school’s secret sauce. But if Green allowed the deceptive conduct to persist, the school could face more legal peril. And, whatever route he took, Green’s school might end up assuming massive liability for student loan debt the government has cancelled based on past abuses at Phoenix.

At its peak, Phoenix was the largest for-profit college in the country and got upwards of $2 billion a year in federal student aid, while reporting dismal graduation rates and high levels of loan defaults.

Phoenix’s owners pursued a deal with Idaho only after the trustees of the University of Arkansas rejected a similar purchase negotiated by that school’s president.

Phoenix’s parent company, Apollo Education Group, had been publicly traded until Apollo and Vistria took the company private in 2017.

There have been previous marriages between big state universities and large predatory for-profit colleges that were seeking to evade the stigma and regulations that the industry’s bad behavior has provoked. The University of Arizona’s purchase of Ashford University has turned into a fiasco both for Arizona, which rebranded the school University of Ariziona Global Campus (UAGC), and for Ashford’s previous owner, now-shuttered Zovio. Meanwhile, Graham Holdings sold predatory Kaplan University to Purdue, while locking that Indiana state school into a 30-year service contract that allows Graham to keep making big money. The arrangement harms Purdue’s reputation, and Purdue Global has struggled financially. Both Purdue Global and UAGC continue to enroll students in their sub-par, overpriced programs.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]  

For-Profit College Barons Backed Trump, But Now May Be Scared (David Halperin)

Many top for-profit college industry owners supported Donald Trump’s bid to return to the White House. They had benefitted when, during Trump’s first term, his education secretary, Betsy DeVos, largely ended federal regulatory and enforcement efforts to hold for-profit schools accountable for deceiving students and ripping off taxpayers. But some industry barons, having contributed to the Trump 2024 campaign, now may be scared by efforts of the new Trump administration, including Elon Musk’s DOGE team, to disrupt operations of the U.S. Department of Education. Both Trump and his new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon publicly suggested last week that the Department will be abolished.

Although the for-profit college industry endlessly complained that the Biden and Obama education departments were unfairly targeting the industry with regulations and enforcement actions, they now seem concerned about the possibility that the Trump administration will shutter the Department entirely, abandon the federal role in higher education oversight, and leave regulation to the states. They likely are even more frightened that the proposed gutting of the Department will interfere with the flow of billions in federal taxpayer dollars to their schools.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Jason Altmire, the former congressman who is now the CEO of the largest lobbying group of for-profit colleges, Career Education Colleges and Universities (CECU), says that his schools are worried about the potential disruption of funding for federal student grants and loans. Altmire apparently also expressed concern that turning regulation over to the states could create problems for online schools that operate in multiple states, especially because some states have relatively strong accountability rules.

Many for-profit colleges receive most of their revenue — as much as the 90 percent maximum allowed by U.S. law — from federal taxpayer-supported student grants and loans. For-profit schools have received literally hundreds of billions in these taxpayer dollars over the past two decades, as much as $32 billion at the industry’s peak around 2010, and around $20 billion annually n0w.

But many for-profit schools have used deceptive advertising and recruiting to sell high-priced low quality college and career training programs that leave many students worse off than when they started, deep in debt and without the career advancement they sought. Dozens of for-profit schools have faced federal and state law enforcement actions over their abuses.

CECU (previously called APSCU and before that CCA) has included in its membership over the years many of the most abusive, deceptive school operations, including Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Education Management Corp., Perdoceo, Center for Excellence in Higher Education, DeVry, Kaplan (now called Purdue University Global), and Ashford University (now called University of Arizona Global Campus). (Republic Report highlighted the bad actors on CECU’s membership list for many years; CECU removed the list from its website about four years ago.)

Florida couple Arthur and Belinda Keiser are among those who have benefited the most from CECU lobbying and taxpayer funding. The Keisers run for-profit Southeastern College and non-profit Keiser University, which collectively have received hundreds of million in federal education dollars over the years. They also are among the most politically active owners in the career college industry.

While Belinda Keiser has run, unsuccessfully, for the state legislature, Arthur Keiser has been one of the most aggressive lobbyists for the career college industry in Washington. He has been a dominant figure on the board of CECU, and he hired expensive lawyers to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in a failed effort to block a settlement that provides debt relief to students who attended deceptive colleges, including Keiser University. During Trump’s first term, Arthur Keiser chaired NACIQI, the Department of Education’s advisory committee reviewing the performance of college accreditors.

The Keisers created controversy and were eventually penalized by the IRS for a shady 2011 conversion of Keiser University from for-profit to non-profit, in a deal that allowed the couple to continue making big money off the school. Keiser University has also settled cases with the Justice Department and the Florida attorney general over deceptive practices.

In the two years leading up to the November 2024 election, according to Federal Election Committee records, Belinda Keiser donated more than $250,000 to various Republican candidates and political committees, including $35,000 to the Trump 47 Committee, $10,300 to the Trump-affiliated Save America PAC, $3300 to the Trump Save America Joint Fundraising Committee, and $33,400 to the Republican National Committee.

Ultra-wealthy college owner Carl Barney was another big Trump 2024 donor. Barney operated the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, another troubling conversion from for-profit to non-profit that kept taxpayer money flowing into his bank accounts, for schools including CollegeAmerica and Independence University. Barney’s schools lost their accreditation, and then their federal aid, after the Colorado attorney general in 2020 won a lawsuit accusing CollegeAmerica of deceptive practices. (The case is still pending after an appeal.)

Amid a torrent of donations to Republican committees last fall totaling over $1.6 million, Barney donated $924,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, $74,500 to the Trump-supporting Make America Great Again PAC, and $247,800 to the Republican National Committee, according to federal records.

In a September post on his personal website, Barney explained that he liked that Trump “wants to work with Elon Musk to reduce spending, regulations, waste, and fraud in the federal government.”

What exactly waste, fraud, and abuse seems to mean in the context of the Trump/Musk effort is troubling. There is little evidence that what DOGE has found and shut down relates to actual fraud, abuse, or corruption.

Instead it appears that much of what Musk and DOGE have focused on is weakening or eliminating either (1) federal agencies that have been investigating Musk businesses, or businesses of other top Trump donors; or (2) agencies that work on priorities — such as equal opportunity for Americans or alleviation of poverty or disease overseas — that Trump or Musk dislike.

And the Trump team has been firing, across multiple federal agencies, the inspectors general, ethics watchdogs, and other top officials actually charged with rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse — further undermining the claim that the Trump team is trying to bring about more honest and efficient government.

It’s doubtful that even the heaviest sledgehammer DOGE attack would eliminate the federal student grants and loans that Congress has mandated to give low and moderate income Americans of all backgrounds a better chance to improve their lives through higher education. Assuming such financial aid will continue, then if Trump, Musk, and DOGE truly wanted to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, and save big money for taxpayers, one thing they could do is strengthen, rather than abolish, the Department of Education — not to keep the money flowing to all for-profit colleges, as CECU seems to want, but to advance efforts to ensure that taxpayer dollars go only to those colleges that are creating real benefits for students and for our economy.

That would mean enforcing and building on, not destroying, the Department of Education rules put in place by the Biden administration, including: the gainful employment rule, which creates performance standards to cut off aid to for-profit and career programs that consistently leave graduates with insurmountable debt; the borrower defense rule, which cancels the debts of students scammed by their schools and empowers the Department to go after those predatory schools to recoup the taxpayer money; and the 90-10 rule, which helps keep low-quality programs out of the federal aid program and reduces the risk that poor quality schools will target U.S. veterans and service members.

It would also mean continuing the Biden administration’s efforts to more aggressively evaluate the performance of the private college accrediting agencies that oversee colleges and serve as gatekeepers for federal student grants and loans.

Fighting waste, fraud, and abuse would also mean strengthening, not gutting, efforts to investigate and fight predatory college abuses by enforcement teams at the Department of Education, Federal Trade Commission, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Justice Department, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Defense. Many deceptive school operations remain in business today, recruiting veterans, single parents, and others into low-quality, over-priced college programs; they include Perdoceo’s American Intercontinental and Colorado Technical University, Purdue University Global, University of Arizona Global Campus, DeVry University, Walden University, the University of Phoenix, South University, Ultimate Medical Academy, and UEI College.

Fighting waste, fraud, and abuse also would likely require a different higher ed leader at the Department than Nicholas Kent, the Virginia state official whom Trump has nominated to serve as Under Secretary of Education. Kent previously worked at CECU as a lobbyist advancing the interests of for-profit schools. Prior to that, he worked at Education Affiliates, a for-profit college operation that faced civil and criminal investigation and actions by the Justice Department for deceptive practices.

Diane Auer Jones, who held the same job in the first Trump administration, had a career background similar to Kent’s, and she twisted Department policies and actions to benefit predatory colleges. That is presumably the world CECU and its for-profit college barons want to restore: All the money, none of the accountability rules.

In the end, the predatory college owners may get what they want. Given the brazen self-dealing, and fealty to corporate donors, of the Trump-Musk administration, and the sharp elbows of paid-for congressional backers of the for-profit college industry like Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), we will probably end up with the worst of all outcomes: the destruction of the Department of Education but a continued flow of taxpayer billions to for-profit schools, without meaningful accountability measures to ensure that everyday Americans are actually protected from waste, fraud, and abuse.

Americans should demand from Trump and Secretary McMahon a different course — one that provides educational opportunity for all and strengthens the U.S. economy by investing in higher education, while removing from the federal aid program the abusive colleges that rip off students and scam taxpayers.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]  

How University of Arizona Global Campus’ Online Recruitment Ads Drain Its Finances (Jeremy Bauer-Wolf)

In 2020, the University of Arizona acquired Ashford University, an online for-profit college that a California court later found guilty of having deceived students about job prospects, transfer opportunities, and degree costs.

Feeling pressured to better compete in the online education market — especially as Arizona State University broadened its virtual options — University of Arizona leaders recast Ashford as the University of Arizona Global Campus, or UAGC.

Administrators pledged to rehabilitate UAGC and abandon the exploitation that landed the former Ashford in legal hot water. UAGC, as its president said in 2022, is “well-positioned to provide adult learners with affordable college credentials that can better prepare them for careers in a rapidly evolving global economy.”

But beneath the rebranding efforts, problems remain. The University of Arizona has spent massively on marketing UAGC, as an audit that consultancy EY conducted last year revealed, a hallmark tactic of predatory for-profit institutions that dress up their junk degrees as prestigious offerings.

UAGC runs extensive and expensive ad campaigns on Google and Facebook, yet fewer than 1% of those reached enroll. This amounts to the university paying $11,521 for every student enrolled from those campaigns, the audit shows.

For context, this is almost as much as the University of Arizona’s in-state tuition and fees per student in the 2023-24 academic year, which federal data estimates to be about $13,000.

And one higher ed consultancy, RNL, found that in 2022, the median cost of recruiting an undergraduate student, minus personnel expenses, was only $1,652 for a four-year private college and $282 at a four-year public institution (though proponents of online education argue this is comparing apples to oranges).

But ultimately, UAGC’s investment has not improved enrollment. It continues to bleed, as it did in Ashford’s later days, dropping from about 107,000 students in fiscal year 2015 to 51,000 in fiscal year 2023.

Criticism from some of the University of Arizona’s faculty has also erupted. In the waning days of 2024, Nolan Cabrera, a professor at the university’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, wrote a public warning to students, urging them not to enroll in UAGC.

Cabrera told New America in a later interview he went public with his criticisms to protect students — and the University of Arizona’s reputation. UAGC, he said, is only hurting students with poor-quality programs, draining resources and sullying its standing as a top-class, R1 institution.

Blake Naughton, UAGC’s vice provost for academic affairs, teaching, and learning for online initiatives said in an emailed statement that “accreditors, government agencies, and other external reviewers” recognize “UAGC’s commitment to the quality of its degree programs.”

“UAGC has developed an innovative model that is validated through reaffirmations of quality by UAGC’s institutional and programmatic accreditors, which includes Quality Matters certification representing the gold standard in online courses, and enthusiastic partnerships with businesses and military employers,” Naughton said. “Further, UAGC faculty are leaders in the scholarship of online teaching and learning, regularly publishing and presenting on the efficacy of its ‘quality at scale’ model.”

The Creation of UAGC

Those inside and out of University of Arizona — state officials, faculty, college students and their advocates — were immediately skeptical of UAGC’s potential quality and value when the university acquired Ashford in 2020. The deal was a complex one that involved the University of Arizona creating a new nonprofit entity, which bought Ashford for $1. In return, UAGC would provide almost 20% of annual tuition revenue to Ashford’s former parent company, Zovio, though that arrangement later fell apart in 2022.

Before the acquisition, Ashford followed the blueprint of one of the most notorious for-profit colleges in American history: the University of Phoenix. Andrew S. Clark — an executive who contributed to the University of Phoenix’s rise — and the company he later worked for, Bridgepoint, replicated deceptive practices around credit transfers, financial aid, and recruitment at Ashford.

In 2017, California’s attorney general alleged Ashford misled prospective students about their chances of securing financial aid, the cost of attendance, the transferability of credits, and how well its programs prepared them for certain careers. The attorney general also accused it of deceiving investors and the public by exaggerating the percentage of working alumni who said their degree helped them in their current jobs.

This complaint was still unresolved by the time University of Arizona acquired it in 2020.

In 2022, the court ruled against Ashford and Zovio. The judge in the case was persuaded by estimates that Zovio made roughly 1.2 million misleading calls to potential students from March 2009 to April 2020.

The University of Arizona painstakingly crafted a public relations campaign to try to cleave UAGC’s reputation from Ashford’s. This was despite widespread concerns among its faculty and staff about Ashford, Cabrera said in an interview.

The administration never truly responded to those fears that Ashford was still peddling poor-quality education, he said. In fact, negotiations surrounding Ashford were so secretive that University of Arizona representatives who were involved with them signed non-disclosure agreements, obfuscating details of the deal, Cabrera argued. (The University of Arizona has said because Zovio was a publicly traded company, the institution “was required to undertake its work on a confidential and ‘need to know’ basis.”)

“You know the old adage, ‘you get what you pay for’?,” Cabrera said, referring to the $1 price tag of the acquisition. “That should tell you everything you need to know.”

UAGC has maintained an anemic graduation rate, only reaching 15% to 20% after the University of Arizona’s acquisition, according to the audit. The University of Arizona’s graduation rate stands between 60% to 70%. The retention rate of full-time students has also only improved modestly, from 24% in 2019 to 30% in 2022, according to federal data.

Mitch Zak, a University of Arizona spokesperson, said in a statement that it and UAGC have different academic models, thus their graduation rates aren’t comparable.

“The majority of UAGC students are working adults and military service members with varying priorities and responsibilities, which results in their taking fewer courses per year than traditional U of A students,” Zak said. “Non-traditional online students nationwide are not expected to graduate in the same timeframe as traditional university undergraduates.”

Recent news reports have also detailed how, like Ashford’s graduates, some UAGC students have said they can’t find sound jobs after leaving and alleged that the institution misled them about the value and cost of their degrees.

Cabrera said the University of Arizona’s leaders have not prioritized improving student outcomes, but rather an online education arms race and particularly beating out Arizona State, reflecting the longstanding rivalry between the two most prominent public universities in the state.

Cabrera said the two institutions are in constant competition — in public college rankings, like U.S. News & World Report’s, in enrolling more students, and other peripheral aspects of their academics, such as who employs more Nobel Prize laureates.

But if the University of Arizona’s leadership was so worried about its reputation, it shouldn’t have scooped up Ashford, Cabrera argued. Its association with Ashford and its shoddy education demeans the value of a University of Arizona degree, too, he said.

Zak pushed back against Cabrera’s allegation, saying that “priority is to ensure that UAGC is meeting the needs of its students, most of whom could not access traditional higher education.”

He also separately in his statement criticized Cabrera, saying the professor is not an expert in online education and did not reach out to UAGC leaders or faculty “to learn more about the differences between the U of A and UAGC as well as the complexities associated with providing access to higher education to working professionals.”

Major Marketing Costs

Amid this firestorm, UAGC’s enrollments continue to slip.

Zak argued this decline “was expected and planned for during the transitional period” as the institution works to integrate the former Ashford into the University of Arizona. He said UAGC is trying to lift enrollment, including through programs that help stopped out students return to college.

Still, the enrollment downturn raises questions in particular about the efficiency of its marketing efforts.

While the analysis doesn’t reveal the full extent of UAGC’s marketing splurge, it likely devotes hundreds of millions of dollars to it, based on figures in the EY audit. A similar institution to UAGC, the University of Maryland Global Campus, also dropped $500 million on just two six-year advertising contracts, according to a separate audit.

UAGC is investing significantly in lead generation, a strategy colleges have tried for more than a decade. They pay for advertisements to appear on webpages, particularly social media platforms, that typically summarize a program and also try to entice prospective students to click a new link for more information.

That ad takes prospects to a separate webpage, where they can fill in their name and other information, becoming a “lead” that a college can try to convince them to enroll.

Yet UAGC’s use of lead generation has been astonishingly fruitless, the audit shows.

Fewer than 1% of students reached through UAGC’s top five paid marketing sources, including Google and Facebook, actually enroll. The numbers concerning Facebook are particularly bleak — only 0.5% of prospective students end up enrolling at UAGC after clicking an advertisement on the platform. The auditor said this means it effectively costs the university more than $34,000 in marketing dollars just for one person to enroll from Facebook.

Even UAGC’s most successful lead generation source — Google search ads — converted just 3% of prospects, with each enrollment costing more than $7,500.

These figures are even more staggering considering UAGC pays to find 85% of its prospects, according to the audit. By contrast, Arizona Online — the university’s self-created online program, which still operates, in parallel to UAGC — buys just 50% of its student leads.

Zak said that UAGC has since “refined” its marketing to “prioritize efficiency and effectiveness,” but did not go into greater detail.

“UAGC has implemented a targeted approach in alignment with its mission of serving non-traditional learners,” Zak said. “UAGC is focused on retention and success and focuses on students who are most likely to benefit from a flexible and supportive learning environment. UAGC leverages data analytics, audience segmentation, and advanced tracking mechanisms to help improve conversion rates and reduce marketing costs.”

He later said that UAGC serves nontraditional students like working adults, military members and first-generation college attendees.

“Reaching those students in a competitive marketplace requires a different approach than traditional four-year universities,” Zak said.

The University of Arizona has faced budget problems broadly and last year said it had a $177 million budget deficit, which it has since reduced significantly.

But for all the university’s publicity efforts around UAGC, prospective students recognize Arizona Online as part of the institution’s brand, more so than UAGC, the audit said. Maintaining both platforms has actually spurred “market confusion,” according to the audit.

To remedy this, the University of Arizona has angled to integrate UAGC and Arizona Online, and Zak pointed to a university statement last year that said the audit findings validate this merger.

Still, this “confusion” underscores broader marketing challenges, like relying heavily on lead generation, a strategy UAGC has leaned into despite the fact that experts have said it’s inefficient to boost enrollment.

In part, that’s because institutions don’t recognize that students won’t make life-altering choices, like where to attend college, based on what’s essentially a pop-up ad, two marketing experts wrote in a 2022 essay.

“Prospective students prudently take their time researching your programs’ offerings in addition to many others,’” they wrote. “They are not naïve, impatient or easily persuaded by glitzy ads and copy. They spend many months researching and deliberating.”

Worse, lead generation can be used for nefarious or even predatory recruitment efforts. Some lead generation companies, for instance, have caught consequences from the Federal Trade Commission, particularly those that target current and former military members.

What To Do Now?

Thus far, the University of Arizona Global Campus is a failed experiment, Cabrera said. He was inspired to publish his concerns about UAGC publicly after students enrolled in its programs began to reach out to him.

Students were distressed. They told him in emails and direct messages on social media that UAGC faculty in education programs couldn’t guide them properly. He said he lost count of how many students contacted him — he estimated more than 20 over an 18-month period.

“For all the political bickering, real students are getting hurt, real students getting harmed here,” Cabrera said. “They’re making a bet, but students are getting hurt in the process.”

The University of Arizona declined to comment on the UAGC students who contacted Cabrera. UAGC faculty later wrote a public rebuttal to Cabrera, arguing his piece was based on his “rather than on facts and thus lacked the academic rigor of factual data from credible sources.”

But the UAGC faculty piece did not refute specifically any data Cabrera cited, including numbers from the EY audit.

In Zak’s emailed statement, he said UAGC students “have access to academic support teams, career services, student access and wellness support teams, and a combination of tools, technology, and guidance to help them progress.”

Cabrera remains unconvinced.

He said the University of Arizona’s leaders have not fulfilled their promise to purge the educational sins of Ashford. The reality is that enrollment continues to plummet, while UAGC’s exorbitant spending on lead generation, with little return, highlights a systemic issue: UAGC, Cabrera said, has seemingly prioritized its push for new students over reforming Ashford’s remnants, which is still making headlines.

This month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would cancel $4.5 billion in loans for 261,000 students who attended Ashford. And last year, the Education Department discharged $72 million in loan obligations for more than 2,300 former Ashford students.

In light of some of the continued problems, the University of Arizona should reassess its fundamentals of online education. It should prioritize meeting the core principles of academic quality and comprehensive student support over marketing its new venture. A stronger focus on student needs would drive more meaningful outcomes and enhance the university’s reputation in the online education space.

As Cabrera suggested, without a realignment of priorities, UAGC risks being an expensive endeavor with little impact. Its reliance on extensive marketing campaigns, like flashy Facebook ads, may eventually draw attention but will struggle to make up for the gaps in delivering long-term value to students.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.] 

Biden-Harris Administration Announces Final Student Loan Forgiveness and Borrower Assistance Actions (US Department of Education)

Total Approved Student Debt Relief Reached Almost $189 Billion for 5.3 Million Borrowers

The Biden-Harris Administration today announced its final round of student loan forgiveness, approving more than $600 million for 4,550 borrowers through the Income-Based Repayment (IBR) Plan and 4,100 individual borrower defense approvals. The Administration leaves office having approved a cumulative $188.8 billion in forgiveness for 5.3 million borrowers across 33 executive actions. The U.S. Department of Education (Department) today also announced that it has completed the income-driven repayment payment count adjustment and that borrowers will now be able to see their income-driven repayment counters when they log into their accounts on StudentAid.gov. Finally, the Department took additional actions that will allow students who attended certain schools that have since closed to qualify for student loan discharges. 

“Four years ago, President Biden made a promise to fix a broken student loan system. We rolled up our sleeves and, together, we fixed existing programs that had failed to deliver the relief they promised, took bold action on behalf of borrowers who had been cheated by their institutions, and brought financial breathing room to hardworking Americans—including public servants and borrowers with disabilities. Thanks to our relentless, unapologetic efforts, millions of Americans are approved for student loan forgiveness,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “I’m incredibly proud of the Biden-Harris Administration’s historic achievements in making the life-changing potential of higher education more affordable and accessible for more people.” 

From Day One the Biden-Harris Administration took steps to rethink, restore, and revitalize targeted relief programs that entitle borrowers to relief under the Higher Education Act but that failed to live up to their promises. Through a combination of executive actions and regulatory improvements, the Biden-Harris Administration produced the following results for borrowers: 

Fixed longstanding problems with Income-Driven Repayment (IDR). The Administration has approved 1.45 million borrowers for $57.1 billion in loan relief, including $600 million for 4,550 borrowers announced today for IBR forgiveness. 

IDR plans help keep payments manageable for borrowers and have provided a path to forgiveness after an extended period. These plans started in the early 1990s, but prior to the Biden-Harris Administration taking office, just 50 borrowers had ever had their loans forgiven. The Administration corrected longstanding failures to accurately track borrower progress toward forgiveness and addressed past instances of forbearance steering whereby servicers inappropriately advised borrowers to postpone payments for extended periods of time. These totals also include borrowers who received forgiveness under the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan prior to court orders halting forgiveness under the SAVE plan. 

Today, the Department also announced the completion of the IDR payment count adjustment, correcting eligible payment counts. While the payment count adjustment is now complete, borrowers who were affected by certain servicer transitions in 2024 may see one or two additional months credited in the coming weeks. The Department is also launching the ability for borrowers to track their IDR progress on StudentAid.gov. Borrowers can now log in to their accounts and see their total IDR payment count and a month-by-month breakdown of progress.   

Restored the promise of Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). The Administration has approved 1,069,000 borrowers for $78.5 billion in forgiveness.  

The PSLF Program provides critical support to teachers, service members, social workers, and others engaged in public service. But prior to this Administration taking office, just 7,000 borrowers had received forgiveness and the overwhelming majority of borrowers who applied had their applications denied. The Biden-Harris Administration fixed this program by pursuing regulatory improvements, correcting long-standing issues with tracking progress toward forgiveness and misuse of forbearances, and implementing the limited PSLF waiver to avoid harm from the pandemic. 

Automated discharges and simplified eligibility criteria for borrowers with a total and permanent disability. The Administration has approved 633,000 borrowers for $18.7 billion in loan relief. 

Borrowers who are totally and permanently disabled may be eligible for a total and permanent disability (TPD) discharge. The Biden-Harris Administration changed regulations to automatically forgive loans for eligible borrowers based upon a data match with the Social Security Administration (SSA). This helped hundreds of thousands of borrowers who were eligible for relief but hadn’t managed to navigate paperwork requirements. The Department also made it easier for borrowers to qualify for relief based upon SSA determinations, made it easier to complete the TPD application, and eliminated provisions that had caused many borrowers to have their loans reinstated. 

Delivered long-awaited help to borrowers ripped off by their institutions, whose schools closed, or through related court settlements. The Administration has approved just under 2 million borrowers for $34.5 billion in loan relief.  

For years, students had sought relief from the Department through borrower defense to repayment—a provision that allows borrowers to have their loans forgiven if their college engaged in misconduct related to the borrowers’ loans. The Department delivered long-awaited relief to borrowers who attended some of the most notoriously predatory institutions to ever participate in the federal financial aid programs. This included approving for discharge all remaining outstanding loans from Corinthian Colleges, as well as group discharges for ITT Technical Institute, the Art Institutes, Westwood College, Ashford University, and others. The Department also settled a long-running class action lawsuit stemming from allegations of inaction and the issuance of form denials, allowing it to begin the first sustained denials of non-meritorious claims. 

Today, the Department also approved 4,100 additional individual borrower defense applications for borrowers who attended DeVry University, based upon findings announced in February 2022.  

“For decades, the federal government promised to help people who couldn’t afford their student loans because they were in public service, had disabilities, were cheated by their college, or who had completed decades of payments. But it rarely kept those promises until now,” said U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal. “These permanent reforms have already helped more 5 million borrowers, and many more borrowers will continue to benefit.” 

The table below compares the progress made by the Biden-Harris Administration in these key discharge areas compared to other administrations. 

	Borrowers approved for forgiveness
	Prior Administrations	Biden-Harris Administration
Borrower Defense (Since 2015)	53,500	1,767,000*
Public Service Loan Forgiveness (Since 2017)	7,000	1,069,000
Income-Driven Repayment (all-time)	50	1,454,000
Total and Permanent Disability (Since 2017)	604,000	633,000

* Includes 107,000 borrowers and $1.25 billion captured by an extension of the closed-school lookback window at ITT Technical Institute.  

Additional actions related to closed school discharges 

The Department today also announced additional actions that will make more borrowers eligible for a closed school loan discharge. Generally, a borrower qualifies for a closed school discharge if they did not complete their program and were either still enrolled when the school closed or left without graduating within 120 days before it closed. . However, the Department has determined that several schools closed under exceptional circumstances that merit allowing borrowers who did complete and were enrolled in the school more than 120 days prior to the closure to qualify for a closed school discharge. justify extending the look-back window beyond the applicable 120 or 180 days--allowing additional borrowers to qualify for a closed school discharge. Generally, eligible borrowers will have to apply for these discharges, but the Secretary has directed Federal Student Aid to make borrowers aware of their eligibility, and to pursue automatic discharges for those affected by closures that took place between 2013 and 2020 and who did not enroll elsewhere within three years of their school closing. 

These adjusted look-back windows are: 

• To May 6, 2015, for all campuses owned at the time by the Career Education Corporation (CEC), which have since closed. That is the day CEC announced it would close or sell all campuses except for two brands. This affected the Art Institutes, Le Cordon Bleu, Brooks Institute, Missouri College, Briarcliffe College, and Sanford-Brown. 
• To December 16, 2016, for campuses owned by the Education Corporation of America (ECA) on that date that closed. ECA operated Virginia College, Brightwood College, EcoTech, and Golf Academies and started on the path to closure after its accreditation agency lost federal recognition and ECA could not obtain accreditation elsewhere. 
• To October 17, 2017 for all campuses owned or sold on that date by the Education Management Corporation (EDMC) and that later closed. That is the day EDMC sold substantially all of its assets to Dream Center Educational Holdings. The decision affects borrowers who attended the Art Institutes, including the Miami International University of Art & Design and Argosy University.  
• To April 23, 2021, for Bay State College. That is the day this Massachusetts-based college began to face significant accreditation challenges, which eventually led to the school losing accreditation and closing in August 2023. 

Borrowers who want more information about closed school discharge, including how to apply, can visit StudentAid.gov/closedschool. 

A state-by-state breakdown of various forms of student debt relief approved by the Biden-Harris Administration is available here.

Feds Cancel Debts for 261,000 Students of Disgraced School Now Run by U. of Arizona (David Halperin)

The Biden Department of Education announced today it has approved $4.5 billion in loan debt cancellation for 261,000 borrowers who attended for-profit Ashford University between March 2009 and April 2020. It also announced it would seek to ban Andrew Clark, the CEO of Ashford’s demised parent company, Zovio, from contracting with the federal government.

The announcement brings some measure of relief and justice to a huge number of former students of Ashford, which evolved from a single campus in Iowa that Zovio acquired in 2005 to a massive, high-priced, poor-quality, mostly-online school that got billions from taxpayers while leaving many worse off than when they enrolled. Ashford and Zovio were held liable and penalized $20 million for scamming students by a California court following a 2022 trial brought by that state’s attorney general. The verdict was upheld on appeal.

The former students were enrolled at Ashford by aggressive recruiters who told a lot of falsehoods but could say, truthfully, that the school was approved for federal student grants and loans by the Department of Education. The Department let these students down by keeping its good housekeeping seal on the school and thus keeping predatory Ashford eligible for taxpayer money. The Biden administration deserves credit for at last righting some of this wrong.

The California trial echoed numerous past reports of abuses by Zovio and Ashford. In fact, at a hearing focused on Ashford way back in 2011, then-Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) declared Ashford “an absolute scam.” The California court found that Zovio and Ashford “created a high pressure culture in admissions that prioritized enrollment numbers over compliance.” The case included detailed testimony from Ashford employees about a deceptive operation engineered by senior Zovio executives — and about numerous lives ruined by a school that never earned the certifications that would allow graduates to even be eligible for the teaching, social work, and other jobs they sought.

Unfortunately for today’s students, Ashford continues to operate. It just changed its name to University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC). In August 2020, Zovio sold Ashford to the University of Arizona, in a shady deal that allowed Zovio to hide the school under the apron of the powerful state university and shed the stigma that for-profit schools like Ashford had brought upon themselves — and yet still permit Zovio to make big money with a long term contract to run Ashford’s operations. After the California verdict, the University of Arizona forced Zovio out of the arrangement, but it hired most of Zovio’s employees and carried on with Zovio’s playbook. Mounting evidence of financial losses and continued predatory practices at the school likely played a role in the resignation of the school’s president last year.

The Department said that the California AG office had requested today’s loan discharges for Ashford students, based on evidence developed in its lawsuit “around widespread misrepresentations in nine separate areas, including students’ ability to obtain needed licensure, transfer credits, the cost and amount of financial aid, and the time it would take to earn a degree.” The Department said it conducted its own review of the evidence before acting.

Ashford has been sued or investigated by other federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the attorneys general of Iowa, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina. A 2015 settlement with the CFPB forced Ashford to discharge $23.5 million in high-interest private loans and pay an $8 million civil penalty.

“Numerous federal and state investigations have documented the deceptive recruiting tactics frequently used by Ashford University,” U.S. Under Secretary of Education James Kvaal said in a statement today. “In reality, 90 percent of Ashford students never graduated, and the few who did were often left with large debts and low incomes. Today’s announcement will finally provide relief to many students who were harmed by Ashford’s illegal actions.”

In 2023 the Department announced $72 million in debt cancellation for more than 2,300 Ashford borrowers who who applied for relief. But with today’s action, a much larger group of former Ashford students will get automatic relief, without having to apply and prove their cases. The Department says it will email former Ashford students informing them of the discharge.

When it announced that first $72 million in relief in 2023, the Department said it planned to come after the University of Arizona to recoup the losses, which federal permits. Today’s announcement creates an even greater risk of liability for the state school. U of A has denied it would be responsible, but its purchase agreement with Zovio suggests otherwise.

Separately, the Department issued a Notice of Proposed Government-Wide Debarment from Federal Procurement and Non-Procurement Transactions to Clark, the founder and former CEO of Zovio — aiming at a decision that would, among other things, prevent Clark from working as a principal or executive of any college getting federal aid.

In a statement today, the Department said it was acting against Clark “because Ashford violated federal regulations regarding making substantial misrepresentations. The evidence from the California litigation, and other sources, which the Department independently reviewed, is mountainous. The conduct of Ashford can be imputed to Mr. Clark because he participated in, knew, or had reason to know of Ashford’s misrepresentations. Mr. Clark not only supervised the unlawful conduct, he personally participated in it, driving some of the worst aspects of the boiler-room-style recruiting culture.”

The Department said it would refer the proposed debarment to its Office of Hearings and Appeals, with a recommendation that Clark be banned for “not less than three years .” (Three years?) Clark would have an opportunity to oppose the move.

I’m not sure Clark will bother, if indeed the debarment effort goes forward under the administration of former Trump University head Donald J. Trump. Clark’s last reported job on his LinkedIn page is as CEO of Zovio, which went out of business in 2022. Clark made tens or even hundreds of millions running Zovio, with annual compensation topping $20 million in at least one year.

Clark abruptly left the company in 2021. Others responsible for awful Zovio, which changed its name from Bridgepoint Education in 2019, include Ryan Craig, a private equity man who served on the board from 2003 to 2022, and Robert Eitel, who worked at the company from 2015 to 2017 and later was one of Betsy DeVos’s top aides in the first Trump Department of Education.

On Monday, the Department of Education granted similar automatic debt relief to 73,600 borrowers who attended schools of the disgraced chain Center for Excellence Higher Education. That operation’s CEO, Eric Juhlin, was similarly debarred by the Department in 2021.

Unfortunately for today’s students, who will now be at the mercy of the incoming Trump administration, in addition to Ashford-n0w-UAGC, there are still many awful, large for-profit chains still running, including Perdoceo and the University of Phoenix.

There’s one other thing the Biden administration could do to halt Ashford’s abuses before it turns over the keys to the Trump administration, which last time did almost everything possible to help predatory schools abuse students: It could act on the long-pending application by Arizona to approve the change of ownership of Ashford. It should reject the application. And the University of Arizona should shut down this scam school once and for all.

When I first got involved in the issue of for-profit colleges, back in 2010, I received a phone call from a man who said he was on a golf course in the San Diego area, where Zovio, then called Bridgepoint, was located. He said that a bunch of Bridgepoint executives were playing golf while loudly mocking Ashford students. He held up the phone so I could hear the laughter.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]

List of Schools with Strong Indicators of Misconduct, Evidence for Borrower Defense Claims

Here (below) is a list of schools where there are strong indicia of misconduct, per the Department of Education and/or the Department of Justice. 

Student loan debtors who have attended these schools, and believe they were defrauded, are encouraged to file Borrower Defense to Repayment claims if they haven't already. 

More than 750,000 Borrower Defense fraud claims have been filed, and tens of thousands have resulted in debt forgiveness. Folks can also join the r/BorrowerDefense group on Reddit for support and guidance.  

Alta Colleges, Inc. (Westwood)

• Westwood College

American Commercial Colleges, Inc.

• American Commercial College

American National University

• American National University

Ana Maria Piña Houde and Marc Houde

• Anamarc College

Anthem Education Group (International Education Corporation)

• Anthem College
• Anthem Institute

Apollo Group

• University of Phoenix
• Western International University

ATI Enterprises

• ATI Career Training Center
• ATI College
• ATI College of Health
• ATI Technical Training Center

Baker College

B&H Education, Inc.

• Marinello School of Beauty

Berkeley College (NY)

• Berkeley College

Bridgepoint Education

• Ashford University
• University of the Rockies

Capella Education Company (Strategic Education, Inc.)

• Capella University

Career Education Corporation

• American InterContinental University
• Briarcliffe College
• Brooks College
• Brooks Institute
• Collins College
• Colorado Technical University
• Gibbs College
• Harrington College of Design
• International Academy of Design and Technology
• Katharine Gibbs School
• Le Cordon Bleu
• Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts
• Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts
• Lehigh Valley College
• McIntosh College
• Missouri College of Cosmetology North
• Pittsburgh Career Institute
• Sanford‐Brown College
• Sanford‐Brown Institute
• Brown College
• Brown Institute
• Washington Business School
• Allentown Business School
• Western School of Health and Business Careers
• Ultrasound Diagnostic Schools
• School of Computer Technology
• Al Collins Graphic Design School
• Orlando Culinary Academy
• Southern California School of Culinary Arts
• California Culinary Academy
• California School of Culinary Arts
• Pennsylvania Culinary Institute
• Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago
• Scottsdale Culinary Institute
• Texas Culinary Academy
• Kitchen Academy
• Western Culinary Institute

Center for Employment Training

• Center for Employment Training

Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE)

• California College San Diego
• CollegeAmerica
• Independence University
• Stevens‐Henager

Corinthian Colleges, Inc.

• American Motorcycle Institute
• Ashmead College
• Blair College
• Bryman College
• Bryman Institute
• CDI College
• Duff's Business Institute
• Eton Technical Institute
• Everest
• Everest University Online
• Everest College Phoenix
• Florida Metropolitan University
• Georgia Medical Institute
• Heald College
• Kee Business College
• Las Vegas College
• National Institute of Technology
• National School of Technology
• Olympia Career Training Institute
• Olympia College
• Parks College
• Rochester Business Institute
• Sequoia College
• Tampa College
• Western Business College
• WyoTech

Computer Systems Institute

• Computer Systems Institute

Court Reporting Institute, Inc.

• Court Reporting Institute

Cynthia Becher

• La' James College of Hairstyling
• La' James International College

David Pyle

• American Career College
• American Career Institute

Delta Career Education Corporation

• McCann School of Business & Technology
• Miami‐Jacobs Career College
• Miller Motte Business College
• Miller‐Motte College
• Miller‐Motte Technical College
• Tucson College

DeVry

• American University of the Caribbean
• Carrington College
• Chamberlain University
• DeVry College of Technology
• Devry Institute of Technology
• DeVry University
• Keller Graduate School of Management
• Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine
• Ross University School of Medicine

EDMC/Dream Center

• Argosy University
• The Art Institute (including The Art Institute of Atlanta, The Art Institute of California, and more)
• Brown Mackie College
• Illinois Institute of Art
• Miami International University of Art & Design
• New England Institute of Art
• South University
• Western State University College of Law

Education Affiliates (JLL Partners)

• All‐State Career School
• Fortis College
• Fortis Institute

Edudyne Systems Inc.

• Career Point College

Empire Education Group

• Empire Beauty School

Everglades College, Inc.

• Everglades University
• Keiser University

FastTrain

• FastTrain

Full Sail University

Globe Education Network

• Globe University
• Minnesota School of Business

Graham Holdings Company (Kaplan)

• Bauder College
• Kaplan Career Institute
• Kaplan College
• Mount Washington College
• Purdue University Global

Grand Canyon Education, Inc.

• Grand Canyon University

Infilaw Holding, LLC

• Arizona Summit Law School
• Charlotte School of Law
• Florida Coastal School of Law

International Education Corporation

• Florida Career College
• United Education Institute

ITT Educational Services Inc.

• ITT Technical Institute

JTC Education, Inc.

• Gwinnett College
• Medtech College
• Radians College

Laureate Education, Inc

• Walden University

Leeds Equity Partners V, L.P.

• Florida Technical College
• National University College
• NUC University

Liberty Partners

• Concorde Career College
• Concorde Career Institute

Lincoln Educational Services Corporation

• International Technical Institute
• Lincoln College of Technology
• Lincoln Technical Institute

Mark A. Gabis Trust

• Daymar College

Mission Group Kansas, Inc.

• Wright Business School
• Wright Career College

Premier Education Group L.P.

• American College for Medical Careers
• Branford Hall Career Institute
• Hallmark Institute of Photography
• Hallmark University
• Harris School of Business
• Institute for Health Education
• Micropower Career Institute
• Suburban Technical School
• Salter College

Quad Partners LLC

• Beckfield College
• Blue Cliff College
• Dorsey College

Remington University, Inc. (Remington College)

• Remington College

Southern Technical Holdings, LLC

• Southern Technical College

Star Career Academy

• Star Career Academy

Strayer University

Sullivan and Cogliano Training Center, Inc.

• Sullivan and Cogliano Training Centers

TCS Education System

• Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Vatterott Educational Centers, Inc.

• Court Reporting Institute of St Louis
• Vatterott College

Wilfred American Education Corp.

• Robert Fiance Beauty Schools
• Robert Fiance Hair Design Institute
• Robert Fiance Institute of Florida
• Wilfred Academy
• Wilfred Academy of Beauty Culture
• Wilfred Academy of Hair & Beauty Culture

Willis Stein & Partners (ECA)

• Brightwood Career Institute
• Brightwood College
• New England College of Business and Finance
• Virginia College