The Business of Higher Education

Higher education is a multi-trillion dollar industry in the US, if you include endowments, land, and other investments.  Journalists and policy people who cover the industry are often quick to put schools and their related businesses into distinct categories, but these categories are oversimplified.  One of the biggest oversimplifications is in categorizing schools as "for-profit" and "non-profit."  

For-profit higher education has typically referred to institutions operating as profit-seeking businesses, but this ignores three centuries of history, economics, and public policy showing the intermingling of for-profit institutions and non-profit enterprises with a for-profit mentality.    

For-profit schools and the for-profit mindset are not new to US education.  While elite private religious based colleges were the first schools of higher education, proprietary training was also available during the late 1700s.  It could be argued that even then, elite colleges could not have grown without the benefits of enslaving their labor, the ultimate in greed and depravity.   

After the US Civil War, through federal legislation (the Morrill Act), state flagship universities were "granted" land stolen from indigenous nations. Private and public black colleges were also formed.  For-profit business and trade schools also sprang up in many American cities, serving a growing demand for entrepreneurs and skilled labor. Private non-profit colleges followed suit.  As early as 1892, University of Chicago started a correspondence school, a money-making strategy copied by Penn State, University of Wisconsin, and many other universities.  

Since the early 20th century, critics have complained about money rather than academics driving traditional university leadership. Thorstein Veblen's book  The Higher Learning in America (1918), was subtitled, "A Memorandum on the Conduct of Universities by Business Men."  Yale and Harvard also brought on football, which was a big money maker for the schools in the early 20th century. In the Goose-Step (1923), Upton Sinclair named names of those with wealth, power, and influence--including a number of robber barons.  

With the help of government funding, higher education grew by leaps and bounds after World War II (the GI Bill) and into the 1960s and 1970s (Pell Grants and federal loans).  State universities and community colleges grew in number.  In 1972, with the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, proprietary schools gained access to these funds to become a larger player in US higher education.  

By the 1980s, the for-profit University of Phoenix (UoPX) became a pioneer as a mega-university, a  school of over 80,000 students with an emphasis on adult learners, convenience, and a business attitude.  For-profit schools gained legitimacy as universities like Devry and UoPX became regionally accredited and others created their own national accreditors.  In the 1980s and 90s for-profit colleges grew as they became publicly traded corporations with enormous profits and political power. 

With profit-driven schools, academic labor was faced with unbundling, where components of the traditional faculty role (e.g., curriculum design) were divided, while others (e.g., research) were eliminated.  Colleges resembled academic assembly lines rather than bastions of wisdom.  But the marginalization of academic labor was not reserved to for-profit schools.  

As this great unbundling was occurring, state flagship universities became enormous research institutions with multiple missions, many of them profit driven.  Proponents of privatization, outsourcing from for-profit companies, have said that it "helps universities save money and makes them more nimble and efficient." Moody's Dennis Gephardt, however warns that "more and more are cutting closer to the academic core." 

Since the 1980s commercialization in nonprofit and public higher education has accelerated, with universities increasingly involved in enterprises focused on generating net revenue, such as licensing of patents. Indicators of for-profit incursions into nonprofit and public higher education may include university medical centers, corporate sponsored science labs, for-profit mechanisms such as endowment money managers, for-profit fees for service, for-profit marketing, enrollment services and lead generation, privatized campus services, for-profit online program managers (OPMs), privatized housing, private student loans, student loan servicers, student loan asset backed securities, and Human Capital Contracts, also known as income share agreements.

For-profit college enrollment has been in decline since the 2010-2011 school year.  University of Phoenix and Devry are shadows of their former selves,  and two other big schools, Kaplan University and Ashford University have been transformed into arms of two state universities, Purdue University Global and University of Arizona Global Campus.   

But proprietary colleges have not been the only type of colleges in decline.  Community colleges and second tier public and private colleges also reported significant enrollment and revenue losses.  Community college enrollment, in fact, has declined in absolute numbers more than for profit colleges.  

During this decade long decline, what I have referred as the College Meltdown, for-profit mechanisms have gained even ground as government aid and institutional bonds fill in revenue gaps.  Today, US higher education marketing and advertising is ubiquitous. The Harvard Business School operates in many ways like a for-profit enterprise.  And many elite schools rely on predatory for-profit online program managers to recruit students for elite certificates, adding some pocket change to their already bulging resources. 

Predatory Colleges, Converted To Non-Profit, Are Failing (David Halperin, Republic Report)

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

About a dozen years ago, owners of some of the biggest, worst-acting for-profit colleges began concocting, with their eager, high-paid lawyers, schemes to convert their schools into non-profits. The apparent aims were to evade the heightened government regulations applied uniquely to for-profit schools in order to guard against waste, fraud, and abuse — and to escape the growing stigma that the industry’s predatory behavior had placed on for-profits.

The clever schemes have come in various colors, yet most of them potentially allowed the sharp operators to keep making big money off the schools they no longer formally owned but, one way or another, still controlled. These dubious deals, mostly blessed by servile government departments and accrediting agencies, have made a mockery of non-profit rules, and, much worse, have helped sustain another decade of predatory college abuses against students and taxpayers, resulting in the waste of billions of dollars and the ruining of the financial futures of tens of thousands of people — veterans, single moms, and others — who sought better lives through higher education.

Yet, just as the private equity owners of the University of Phoenix, historically one of the biggest for-profit schools, are now trying to execute yet another dubious version of this scheme — getting a pile of cash by unloading the school on Scott Green, the hubristic president of the University of Idaho, and potentially allowing the current, high-paid executive team to stay employed — it seems, increasingly, that many of these non-profit conversions are not just harmful to the public but also ultimately unsustainable for the operators.

Here’s what’s been happening lately:

— Last week, the Federal Trade Commission sued Grand Canyon University and its CEO, asserting that the school deceived doctoral students about the costs and course requirements of programs — and about the school’s claimed nonprofit status. The FTC also alleges that Grand Canyon engaged in deceptive and abusive telemarketing.

The FTC lawsuit follows an October announcement by the U.S. Department of Education that it is imposing a $37 million fine on Grand Canyon based on similar allegations.

Grand Canyon CEO Brian Mueller has responded to the FTC and education department investigations with a remarkable series of pronouncements suggesting that the moves against his self-proclaimed Christian university are rooted in religious or ideological bias. But, in reality, Grand Canyon’s troubles with regulators began not in the Biden administration, which has cracked down on for-profit college abuses, but under Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, a Christian conservative who staffed her office with former for-profit college executives and did almost nothing else over four years to hold predatory colleges accountable.

Grand Canyon in 2018 had restructured itself into two entities: a non-profit college, GCU, and a for-profit company, Grand Canyon Education (GCE), that gets paid to provide a range of services to the school. Even though the IRS already had declared GCU a legitimate non-profit, the DeVos Department of Education in 2019 rejected the school’s bid for preferred non-profit status under federal education rules, concluding that “the primary purpose” of the Grand Canyon conversion to non-profit was “to drive shareholder value for GCE with GCU as its captive client — potentially in perpetuity.” The DeVos team couldn’t help but notice that Brian Mueller is the well-paid head not only of the non-profit school but also of the for-profit company has been getting about 95 percent of the non-profit college’s revenue.

Together, the Department and FTC actions call into question not only the integrity of Grand Canyon’s recruiting and academic operations, but also its effort to be accepted as non-profit.

— Last month, the Department of Education took another step to hold accountable the non-profit Center for Excellence in Higher Education, whose schools, the largest of which was Independence University, shut down in 2021. The Department demanded $23 million from CEHE to pay for “closed-school discharges” — reimbursement for cancellation of federal student loan debts that former students had owed the government. The Department in July already had cancelled $130 million in federal loan debt from former CEHE students, citing school misconduct; the Department could potentially seek to recoup all those funds from CEHE.

The ultra-wealthy Ayn Rand disciple Carl Barney owned the schools until 2012, when he sold them at a hefty valuation to CEHE, a small non-profit that he controlled. Seemingly sleepy career officials at the Department of Education approved the transaction in the Obama years, but public scrutiny raised doubts about the appropriateness of the deal.

Like Grand Canyon, CEHE’s abuses were by no means limited to the terms of the non-profit conversion. In 2020, a Colorado court found the company had engaged in systematic deceptive practices. Barney’s schools, the court concluded after an extensive trial, used a detailed playbook to manipulate vulnerable students into enrolling in high-priced, low-quality programs; directed admissions representatives to “enroll every student,” regardless of whether the student would likely graduate; greatly overstated starting salaries that graduates could earn; and falsely inflated graduation rates. CEHE has been pursuing an appeal, but in 2021, the accrediting agency for the schools withdrew approval, citing performance failures, and the Department of Education soon after tightened the screws on federal aid, precipitating the schools’ closure.

CEHE is a mess. It no longer runs any schools or gets any federal aid; instead its functions seem to be limited to trying to get former students to pay back the sketchy, high-interest private loans the school peddled, and engaging in legal disputes with the federal government; these include a pending fraud lawsuit filed by a CEHE whistleblower and joined by the Justice Department, an investigation of CEHE’s private loans by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and a lawsuit for $500 million brought by CEHE against the government alleging the schools were “a victim” of a campaign by the Department of Education “in coordination with ideological confederates… to cripple and close as many private career colleges as possible.” The Department also has suspended CEHE CEO Eric Juhlin from federal contracting.

— Another of the worst predatory for-profit schools is Ashford University, whose corporate owner Zovio pursued several different schemes for a non-profit conversion before finally selling the college to the University of Arizona, whose president, Robert Robbins, had been pressured by state regents to expand its online offerings.

Zovio’s scheme was to hide behind the prestige and political power of a big state university and yet keep getting for itself hundreds of millions off the school, now called University of Arizona Global Campus, through a long-term contract to provide recruiting, academic, and other services.

But that plan was thwarted after a California judge, in 2022, found Zovio liable for blatant deceptions of Ashford students and imposed $22 million in penalties. By law, the California judgment should compel the Department of Education to terminate federal aid to the school. Although Zovio pursued an appeal, it was discredited, bowed out of its contract to serve UAGC, transferred its infrastructure to the University of Arizona, and shut down.

But, with Zovio out of the picture, what was obvious to some even before the deal closed seems to have played out: Most of what Arizona had purchased, most of what made money, was not some supercharged high tech education platform but instead a predatory playbook and a staff trained to execute it. UAGC may not be able to pay its bills even if it keeps up with Ashford’s old predatory practices, but it almost certainly can’t do so if it tries to go straight. In November, President Robbins admitted that the University of Arizona’s overall financial situation is fragile, with cash reserves below minimum levels. Robbins said the school had “overinvested,” and school document revealed that one such exertion was the deal to buy Ashford, which “added $265.5 million in operating costs…”

Arizona’s financial woes from the Ashford deal may grow. Former Ashford students say they were ripped off and, as a result, have applied to have their federal student loans cancelled under a provision of law called borrower defense to repayment. In August, the U.S. Department of Education said it would cancel $72 million worth of loans because of Ashford’s deceptions. The Department also said it would use its legal powers to recoup those funds from Ashford’s owner, meaning the University of Arizona. UA says in response it had “absolutely no involvement in, and is not directly or indirectly responsible for, the actions of Ashford and its parent company” and will be “assessing its options.” But, reading the school’s agreement with Zovio, Arizona may be out of luck on that score.

— In contrast to Zovio’s fate, Graham Holdings has not been forced out of the 2017 deal in which it sold predatory for-profit Kaplan University to an Indiana state institution, Purdue University. Graham continues to hold a contract to provide a wide range of services to the school, now called Purdue University Global — a deal that Purdue is locked into for a 30-year term.

The Graham/Kaplan schools repeatedly faced law enforcement problems for predatory abuses against students before the sale. But the schools did better exercising political influence: The company’s head, Donald Graham, is a hyper-connected Washington insider; the business, long run by his family, was previously called The Washington Post Company, before it sold the newspaper to Jeff Bezos. Graham exploited his power and connections in DC to become the most effective lobbyist pressuring the Obama administration and Congress not to push too hard on for-profit college accountability; his protege Jeffrey Zients held key positions in the Obama White House, as did Anita Dunn, whom, once she left government, Graham hired to tell his schools’ supposedly compelling story to lawmakers. Dunn and Zients are now perhaps the two most powerful staffers in the Biden White House.

Having utilized his tight connections to key Democrats in the Obama years, Graham then took advantage of the lax regulatory environment under Republicans Trump and DeVos to do his troubling non-profit conversion deal with another top Republican politico, then-Purdue president Mitch Daniels, a former Indiana governor and White House official, who may have been dazzled by Graham’s big money ties, including his status as an ex-Facebook board member, and seen Kaplan as the road to a high-tech future.

But this effort to put state college lipstick on a for-profit pig may be failing as well. As Forbes noted last month, Graham Holdings‘ November filing with the SEC says Purdue Global owes the company $127.8 million — perhaps more than the school, structured as a non-profit associated with Purdue University, would be able to pay. Cutting costs at the school in order to pay Graham Holdings’ fees would likely mean lower-quality educational programs. Boosting enrollment for lower-quality programs would likely mean accelerating the deceptive recruiting practices, targeted at low-income Americans, that sullied Kaplan in the first place. Doing all of that at a time when the Biden administration, to its great credit, is working diligently to hold predatory schools accountable would be risky.

Don Graham’s best shot at continuing to make millions off Purdue Global may be for his long-time allies in the Biden administration to fail this year, and give way again to a president Trump, who once ran his own scam real estate school and likely would identify with Graham’s sense of victimhood about the persecutions of great for-profit educators.

— Finally, there is ultra-wealthy Arthur Keiser and his Keiser University, whose 2011 conversion from for-profit to non-profit was comparable to Carl Barney and CEHE: a sale of the for-profit school owned by Keiser, at a remarkably high valuation, to a non-profit controlled by Keiser. In addition to the inflated loan payments Keiser has since received from the non-profit, there are a range of businesses owned by Keiser that sell various services to the non-profit. Even worse, as we have documented, there is a highly questionable mingling of resources and personnel between the non-profit Keiser University and Southeastern College, another for-profit school owned by Arthur Keiser and his wife.

Keiser University seems to have come the closest to thriving after a shady non-profit conversion, but its troubles are now growing.

Arthur Keiser has gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, with his expensive lawyers trying, but so far failing, to block a landmark court settlement aimed at cancelling the student loan debt of hundreds of thousands of ex-students who have filed borrower defense claims, saying they were deceived by their schools. His complaint is that Keiser University was, for purposes of the deal, unfairly placed by the U.S. Department of Education on a list of presumptively bad-acting colleges when, he insists, “There’s no evidence of misconduct.”

But Keiser’s claim of innocence is just another deception.

Like all the other schools with troubling conversions, Keiser University also has repeatedly gotten in trouble with law enforcement, and settled claims, including with then-Florida attorney general Pam Bondi and with the U.S. Justice Department, over allegations of deceptive and unlawful recruiting practices. And recent staff members have told us about predatory behavior still happening at the school, including recruiting of low-income people seemingly unprepared for college programs and of people with insufficient English language skills to understand the course work.

Keiser University also has been in trouble recently with three different accreditors of specific school programs, who have placed the school on warning, probation, or show cause status due to concerns about matters including program effectiveness and certification exam passage rates.

The non-profit conversion also has, finally, gotten Keiser University in trouble; the school admitted under congressional questioning in 2021 that the IRS imposed a penalty on the school for improperly steering profits to Arthur Keiser by entering into leases above fair market value with Keiser-related for-profit companies. Senior Democrats in Congress, including senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) have called on the U.S. Department of Education to investigate Keiser’s schools, which have received billions in taxpayer-funded student financial aid.

And, in November 2022, the Department determined that Keiser University’s accreditor, SACS, was out of compliance with numerous federal regulations and directed it to provide more information regarding its oversight of Keiser University and the school conversion to non-profit.

As part of the Department of Education’s regular oversight process for accreditors, I recently wrote to the Department, for a second time, urging it to hold SACS accountable unless it takes steps to address the conversion deal and predatory practices at Keiser’s schools. I hope that will happen, and that the Department itself will take steps to protect students by imposing conditions on Keiser’s future receipt of federal aid.

— Conversion from for-profit to non-profit has not prevented serious financial and / or legal problems at all of the schools we’ve discussed. In recent years, government regulators, accreditors, courts, and students have seen through the conversions, recognizing that predatory for-profit schools — with greedy owners, deceptive practices, poor value educational programs, and low return on student and taxpayer investment — remain predatory schools even when dressed up as non-profit colleges or big state universities. (The conversion of another huge predatory chain, EDMC, to non-profit also has been a disaster.)

Yet somehow the president of the University of Idaho, Scott Green, continues to insist he will be serving his school, and students, by acquiring, through an affiliated new non-profit, the giant for-profit University of Phoenix from huge private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Green remains determined to buy and run Phoenix despite Phoenix’s long and continuing record of abuses and law enforcement problems, despite the enormous potential liability Idaho might assume for debt cancellation for former Phoenix students, and despite opposition from many leaders in his own state, as well as advocates for students across the country. If Green — whose team keeps claiming, falsely, that Phoenix is under honest new management — and the Idaho state board of education can’t look objectively at the evidence that past conversions have been a moral disgrace, and a disaster for school operators, as well as students and taxpayers, then others in his state, the University of Idaho’s accreditor, and the U.S. Department of Education, should act to block the deal.

Bibliography of the College Meltdown

Dahn Shaulis

CollegeMeltdown@protonmail.com

Alexander, B. (2020). Academia Next: The Futures of Higher Education

Angulo, A. (2016). Diploma Mills: How For-profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream

Armstrong, E. and Hamilton, L. (2015). Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality

Bennett, W. and Wilezol, D. (2013). Is College Worth It?: A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education                          

Berg, G. (2005). Lessons from the Edge: For-profit and Nontraditional Higher Education in America

Best, J, and Best, E. (2014). The Student Loan Mess: How Good Intentions Created a Trillion-Dollar Problem

Blumenstyk, G. (2014). American Higher Education in Crisis?: What Everyone Needs to Know

Bousquet, M. (2008). How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low Wage Nation

Breneman, D. et al. (2006). Earnings from Learning: The Rise of For-profit Universities

Cappelli, P. (2015). Will College Pay Off?: A Guide to the Most Important Financial Decision You'll Ever Make

Chung, A. (2012). Choice of For-profit College Economics of Education Review, v31 n6 p1084-1101.

Cottom, T. (2016). Lower Ed: How For-profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America

Cottom, T. (2014). For-profits Are Us. AFT Higher Education On Campus 33(4), pp. 7–11.

Donoghue, F.  (2008). The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities

Fabricant, M. (2016). Austerity Blues

Ginsberg, B. (2013). The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All Administrative University and Why It Matters

Giroux, H. (2014). Neoliberalism's War on Higher Education

Golden, D. (2006). The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys its Way into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates

Goldrick-Rab, S. (2016). Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream

Halperin, D. (2014). Stealing America's Future: How For-profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students' Lives

Hentschke, G. et al. (2010). For-profit Colleges and Universities: Their Markets, Regulation, Performance, and Place in Higher Education

Johnson, B. et al. (2003). Steal This University: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement

Kinser, K. (2006). From Main Street to Wall Street: The Transformation of For-profit Higher Education

Leach, T. (2008). The Impact of For-profit Privatization on Higher Education in the State of Massachusetts

Levin, H. (2001). Thoughts on For-profit Schools

McGuire, M. (2012). Subprime Education: For-profit Colleges and the Problem with Title IV Student Aid. Duke Law Journal, 62 (1): 119-160

Mettler, S. (2014). Degrees of Inequality: How the Politics of Higher Education Sabotaged the American Dream

Morey, A. (2004). Globalization and the Emergence of For-profit Education

Murphy, J. (2013). Mission Forsaken—The University of Phoenix Affair With Wall Street

Newfeld, C. (2011). Unmaking the Public University

Newfeld, C. (2016). The Great Mistake: How We Wrecked Public Universities and How We Can Fix Them

Perini, M.(2011). A Phoenix Still in Ashes: For-profit Open Admissions and the Public Good

Roth, G. (2019). The Educated Underclass: Students and the False Promise of Social Mobility

 
Ruch, R. (2003). Higher Ed Inc.: The Rise of the For-profit University

Selingo, J. (2013). College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students    

Stodghill, R. (2015). Where Everybody Looks Like Me: At the Crossroads of America's Black Colleges and Culture                                                                                                       

Vedder, R. (2004). Going Broke By Degree: Why College Costs Too Much          

Washburn, J. (2006). University Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education

When college choice is a fraud

Students are targeted and lied to by subprime colleges and they are often treated with indifference by public education.

In 2014, USC graduate student Constance Iloh and her advisor Dr. William Tierney examined the "rational choices" behind college choice. Their subjects were more than 130 students who had chosen either a community college or for-profit college for a vocational nursing or surgical technician associate’s degree.

Rational choice, a common theory in mainstream economics, refers to the theory that individuals make decisions to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs. By talking to focus groups, the researchers hoped to find out why students chose a $30,000 for-profit education lasting 13 months or a $5,000 public program taking two years to finish. Both schools had graduation rates of about 30%.

In the Iloh and Tierney study, students who chose for-profit colleges said that community colleges presented too many barriers and that their schools offered more convenience and accessibility in scheduling and location. With accelerated schedules, for-profit students thought they could graduate earlier than if they attended a community college--which was important as they weighed important family obligations.

Some for-profit college students also believed their education was superior to a community college because it offered more "hands on" opportunities. The researchers did not dig deeper though, to investigate how the students came up with their ideas.

Although most of the students were probably women, and many were working-class people and people of color, the researchers did not discuss important race, class, and gender issues. The researchers also ignored examining cross-culturally: what other nations have done to make higher education more effective, socially just, and democratic, or even how various states in the United States have made college free or low cost to its citizens.

"Rational choice" in US education, however, must be examined in a society affected by deindustrialization and deskilling of work, government austerity and the defunding of public education, neoliberalism, structural racism, increasing economic inequality and reduced intergenerational social mobility, social myths perpetuated by predatory marketing, and ultimately--difficult choices caused by "the injuries of class."

The truth is, millions of hard working low-wage workers (including single mothers, disabled military veterans, struggling immigrants, people with learning challenges or those who have had fewer educational opportunities) may be looking for the most obvious way to achieve the American Dream, whether it's from a message in their email inbox or a friendly voice at the other end of the telephone.

But that's the essence of the for-profit con--something that Iloh and Tierney downplay.  There are subprime schools regularly trolling for the most vulnerable people.

The researchers also fail to recognize that some for-profit students continue along the more financially expensive route, even after realizing they've made a bad choice, believing they have sunk too much into their investment to quit--and knowing that their credits won't transfer.

Theories of Sunken Investment, Time Discounting, and Asymmetric Information may be useful in understanding the difficult personal choices that working class people face--but theories of justice must also be utilized.

Sadly, this study really shows the dysfunctional nature of US education in general. Whether a working class student chooses a for-profit college, community college, or public or private university, he or she is taking on significant risks of either not graduating, taking on enormous debt, subjecting family members to debt obligations, or being taken away from important family interests.

Dr. Tierney is not an objective researcher (no researcher is). He is a tenured professor at an elite university who believes for-profit colleges have a role in American neoliberal society. And he has colleagues who have profited from this line of thinking. Tierney believes for-profit schools have problems, but that they can be reformed. With the poor state of many subprime for-profit colleges and community colleges, it's difficult to imagine how educational reform is possible.

To make better informed choices, working-class people surely need to learn about the myths of college and the sales pitches that are used to hook unsuspecting prospects. But even that is not enough. Without social justice, fairness, and access in society, people will be compelled to pray and make the best of unjust and limited "rational" choices.

"If we expect to increase the rate of degree completion, we must invest in early childhood education and enhance the quality of precollegiate education, especially for students who are African American, Hispanic, and low income" --Diane Ravitch

An earlier version of this article is available at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/college-choice-rational-dahn-shaulis?trk=mp-author-card

IPEDS Trend Generator illustrates lower enrollment, less revenues, fewer jobs at for-profit colleges

The newest US Department of Education IPEDS data show that enrollment, revenues, and jobs have decreased dramatically in the for-profit college sector. 

Enrollment at for-profit colleges dropped from a peak of 2.4 million in Fall 2010 to 1.3 million in Fall 2017.  That's an enrollment drop of 1.1 million.  

This, in turn, has led to less revenue and fewer workers. 

Revenues at for-profit colleges peaked in 2011 at $29.6B and dropped to $19.4B in Fall 2017. That's a drop of more than $10B a year from its peak. 

For-profit college employees peaked at 295,887 in 2012 and the number dropped to 176,441 by Fall 2017. That's a loss of more than 120,000 jobs.

Decline in enrollment, revenues, and employees (2010-present)

Fall/Year    Enrollment    Revenues              Employees
2010           2,430,657      29,603,059,000     295,476
2011           2,368,440      33,889,758,000     288,882
2012           2,174,457      32,196111,000      295,887
2013           2,000,883      29,643,714,000     258,098
2014           1,883,199      27,310,167,000     241,134
2015           1,629,393      24,007,022,000     214,656
2016           1,437,452      20,804,128,000     191,083

2017           1,345,633      19,446,382,000     176,441 

You can create graphs and tables yourself using the updated data at the IPEDS Trend Generator.

Current conditions in the for-profit college industry may actually be worse, judging by the Fall 2018 assessment by National Student Clearinghouse, which had reported an additional 15 percent decline.  However, NSC's original press release has been removed.  

The data also do not consider more recent losses, such as the collapse of Education Corporation of America (which includes Brightwood College and Virginia College) or Dream Center Education Holdings (which includes Argosy, Art Institutes, and South University. 

One confounding issue is that for-profit colleges Grand Canyon University and Purdue University Global (formerly Kaplan) have moved to the non-profit side.  Ashford University is also working on having its tax status changed from for-profit to non-profit.

Related link: Observations of the College Meltdown in Real Time

Related link: The Slow-Motion Collapse of America’s Largest University

Robocollege Update

 

Robocolleges are a mix of for-profit and non-profit online colleges, both secular and Christian.  Their focus is on automation and reduced costs, particularly labor costs:

Instruction is delivered through automated Learning Management Systems (LMS) and online platforms, relying less on professors and more on pre-recorded lectures and automated grading. Even support staff are being replaced by chatbots.  

While some qualified individuals might be involved, educational content is often developed by large teams with varying expertise, potentially sacrificing quality for cost-effectiveness.

Marketing and advertising continue to be costly. But targeting marketing (e.g. targeting military service members and veterans, teachers, nurses, and government workers in low-income neighborhoods) can improve cost efficiency. 

Robocolleges offer degrees with a wide range of value to consumers (return on investment versus debt).  For people who need a degree (or an advanced degree) to play the game in government and medicine, these credentials may have value. 

Competency-based education and credits for life experience reduce the number of courses some students need to graduate.  Servicemembers going to Purdue Global, for example, can get an AA with as few as five college courses and a BS with as little as seven additional courses.

Cheating is probably easier for online students who are so inclined and whether these companies care is not really known.  

Southern New Hampshire (SNHU) continues to be the growth and efficiency leader, with the highest enrollment, more than 160,000 students. SNHU is also experimenting with artificial intelligence to reduce labor costs. In addition, SNHU works with Guild (aka Guild Education), which recruits workers from Walmart, Target, Waste Management, and other large employers.  

Grand Canyon (for-profit) and Liberty University (non-profit) target Christians for online credentials.  But oppressive debt is a concern with some of their programs. Social mobility for students is subpar.  

Purdue University Global and University of Arizona, Global Campus are two former for-profit colleges now owned by state universities. Information about their financial status is sketchy. Like SNHU, Purdue Global works with Guild to recruit working folks.  Purdue Global owes its online program manager. Kaplan Education, about $128 million.  Arizona Global has had financial difficulties which have affected the University of Arizona's bottom line.  

The University of Phoenix has returned to profitability by reducing instruction and student services by $100 million a year and legal costs by $50 million a year.  Consumers continue to file fraud complaints by the tens of thousands.  And debt is an enormous problem with former students.  It's not apparent whether Phoenix can maintain such enormous profits, but its future as a non-profit affiliated with the University of Idaho may reduce its tax burden and legal liabilities. 

Here are the most recent numbers from the US Department of Education College Navigator:

American Intercontinental University: 89 full-time instructors for 14,333 students.
American Public University System has 332 F/T instructors for 48,688 students.
Aspen University has 27 F/T instructors for 7,386 students.
Capella University: 180 F/T for 39,727 students.
Colorado State University Global: 40 F/T instructors for 9,565 students.
Colorado Technical University: 55 F/T instructors for 24,808 students.
Devry University online: 61 F/T instructors for 26,384 students.
Grand Canyon University has 550 F/T instructors for 101,816 students.*
Liberty University: 735 F/T for 96,709 students.*
Purdue University Global: 337 F/T instructors for 45,125 students.
South University: 41 F/T instructors for 7,707 students.
Southern New Hampshire University: 130 F/T for 164,091 students.
University of Arizona Global Campus: 122 F/T instructors for 34,190 students.
University of Maryland Global: 177 F/T instructors for 55,838 students.
University of Phoenix: 80 F/T instructors for 88,891 students.
Walden University: 235 F/T for 42,312 students.

*Most F/T faculty serve the ground campuses that profit from the online schools. 

 

Related links:

Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education (2023)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins, 2023)

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs (2021)

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents" (2019)

The Higher Education Assembly Line (2019)

 

 

 

 

Colleges Are Outsourcing Their Teaching Mission to For-Profit Companies. Is That A Good Thing? (Richard Fossey*)

[This article is part of the Transparency-Accountability-Value series.]

Years ago, colleges employed people to perform auxiliary services. University employees staffed the campus bookstore, ran the student union, and performed janitorial services.

Over time, however, universities began outsourcing almost all of their auxiliary services. Barnes & Noble now runs hundreds of college bookstores. National fast-food chains operate stores in countless student unions.

Recently, however, American colleges have gone beyond outsourcing their non-instructional activities. Now, the universities are outsourcing their core mission: teaching students.

According to the Government Accountability Office (as reported in the Wall Street Journal), 550 colleges and universities are partnering with for-profit companies to design courses, recruit students, and manage instruction.

Academic Partnerships, one of the leading for-profit outfits, contracts with universities all over the United States to manage graduate programs--for a hefty fee, of course. Higher Education Inquirer estimates that AP collects about half the revenue from the courses and programs they manage.

2U, another for-profit online instruction provider, has a contract for services with the University of Oregon and gets 80 percent of the tuition for 2U-managed courses. That's a good deal for 2U's stockholders.

What the hell is going on?

As the Wall Street Journal explained, colleges are losing revenue due to declining enrollments. They aren't raising enough money to pay all their administrators and bureaucrats. Thus, hundreds of schools are investing heavily in online academic programs--especially graduate programs--to juice their revenues.

Respected public universities like the University of North Carolina and the University of Oregon have turned to for-profit companies to design or revamp various graduate programs, recruit students, and oversee instruction.

Why don't the professors do those things?

I don't know. Perhaps the faculty don't have the skills necessary to recruit students, manage enrollment, or design academic programs for an online format. Or maybe doing these things is just too fuckin' hard.

I have a professor friend whose dean ordered him to design and teach an online course for a master's degree program managed by Academic Partnerships. He was told the class would be conducted online over five weeks.

My friend was a good soldier and taught the course as directed. He had over 600 online students! When the class was completed, my friend told the dean he would never teach an online course that way again, even if it meant being fired.

As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, students are often unaware that they are taking a course managed by a profit-driven company, not the university.

For example, the University of Texas at Arlington has a big-time financial relationship with Academic Partnerships, which manages graduate programs in nursing, education, business, and public health. Nevertheless, UTA's promotional materials do not disclose that Academic Partnerships manages these online graduate programs.

Students all over the United States are taking out loans to pay tuition bills at public universities in the naive belief that these schools are non-profit entities dedicated solely to the public good.

Most of these students would be surprised to learn that a profit-making company is sucking up a good share of their tuition dollars to enrich their executives and investors.

My take on this? If a public university is so goddamn lazy or incompetent that it has to pay a private company to manage its academic programs, then that university should be closed. 

Richard Fossey


*This article originally appeared in Richard Fossey's Condemned to Debt Blog. The blog's URL is https://www.condemnedtodebt.org/

 

 

I Went on Strike to Cancel My Student Debt and Won. Every Debtor Deserves the Same. (Ann Bowers*)

Image of Ann Bowers, courtesy of the Debt Collective

[Note:  This article originally appeared in In These Times on June 2, 2022.  The Higher Education Inquirer is now working with Ann Bowers and the Debt Collective to restore GI Bill benefits to veterans preyed upon by for-profit colleges.]

This week, former students of Corinthian Colleges — a predatory for-profit school that once boasted more than 100 campuses across the country — received news that their student loans will be canceled. In an announcement, a Department of Education (DOE) press release called the move ​“the largest single loan discharge the Department has made in history.” As a former student of Everest College, which is a branch of Corinthian, I am overjoyed that everyone who attended the scam school will finally be made whole.

The action, announced on June 2, will impact 560,000 former Corinthian students and $5.8 Billion in total student debt will be cancelled. This amounts to a stunning victory for debtors who took collective action to win relief.

But I want to set the record straight. This victory is not the result of the Biden administration’s good will. It is the outcome of a fierce organizing campaign by debtors that has been going on for almost eight years. I should know. I was part of a group of former students that launched a 7-year long student debt strike to win loan cancellation from the federal government.

Now, as President Biden considers cancelling student loan debt more broadly, the outcome for former Corinthian students should send a clear message that the only way to resolve the issue of pernicious student loan debt is to cancel it for everybody and to do so automatically, without making borrowers individually apply.

My involvement started back in 2014 when I read an article that revealed my school was suspected of lying to and defrauding borrowers, many of whom were from low-income families. I was outraged to discover that Corinthian had been under investigation by the U.S. Senate since at least 2010 for breaking the law — all while continuing to receive billions of dollars per year in government funding. Investigators found that Corinthian lied to students about job placement rates, enrolled people who were not prepared for college-level work and offered a sub-par education. The college also provided falsified placement information to accrediting agencies in order to keep federal money flowing. Some of the evidence against Corinthian was compiled by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who sued the school in 2013 for false advertising.

Furious and determined to fight back, I turned to social media and found that hundreds of former students of my school were gathering online to address the dilemma that we had found ourselves in: huge debts and worthless degrees.

Organizers from the Debt Collective, a union for debtors, had also heard about the plight of Corinthian borrowers and found our group on Facebook. They proposed that everyone who had attended the school join together to pressure the government to cancel our debts. There were few other choices: student debts cannot be erased in bankruptcy except in a few extreme circumstances. Turning our individual burdens into a collective demand was our only option.

In the winter of 2015, a group of former students met in person to plan the campaign. We were all in a similar situation. None of us had been able to find the high-paying jobs that Corinthian had promised, and none of us could afford to pay back the astronomical sums that we owed. We turned our inability to repay into a rallying cry and launched a student debt strike — the first in U.S. history — to demand the cancellation of our loans. We called ourselves the Corinthian Fifteen.

The law was on our side. We relied on an obscure legal mechanism called Borrower Defense to Repayment that required the government to cancel the debts of defrauded students. Since the DOE did not even have an application available to those who wanted to apply for relief, we worked with lawyers to design a form and then made it available on the Debt Collective’s website. By the spring of 2015, applications from former for-profit college students rolled in by the thousands.

Public opinion was also on our side. Our campaign went viral. Dozens of news outlets covered the story of the scammed borrowers who were taking on the Obama administration in March 2015. Strikers met in Washington, D.C. with officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Education and the Treasury Department. We shared our experiences of being lied to and defrauded by Corinthian and delivered hundreds of applications for loan relief into the hands of Ted Mitchell, the Undersecretary of Education under President Obama.

Our campaign won the support of major media organizations like the New York Times editorial board and politicians like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Hillary Clinton. As more former for-profit college students realized they had been scammed, our numbers grew. We were joined by students who had attended other predatory schools such as ITT Technical Institutes. Our group of 15 strikers soon grew to 100. Thanks to the Debt Collective, we met with lawyers who helped us understand the consequences of not paying our debts. We knew that defaulted debtors could face wage garnishment and tax offsets. Older borrowers might have their social security benefits garnished. But we were ready for those consequences. Most of us could not afford to pay anyway and were already in default, so the strike was a way to politicize our inability to pay. We stood together for everyone in our situation across the country.

Unfortunately, the Department of Education dragged its feet. Officials claimed they cared about us and wanted to help, but rather than just canceling debts that were shattering lives and ruining futures, they set up a series of administrative processes and claimed they needed to study the issue. Little by little, a few former students who filled out the correct forms and checked the right boxes got their loans relieved. But hundreds of thousands of others waited in anguish.

I was one of the lucky ones. Finally, in 2017, I received an email from the DOE that said my loans were being canceled. My joy was tempered by the fact that thousands of others were still in debt. The news got even worse when President Donald Trump came into office. His Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, halted the relief process that had begun slowly under Obama.

But the fight is far from over, and the stakes are higher than ever.

Back in 2010, when I enrolled at Corinthian, I didn’t know there was such a thing as for-profit education. I assumed that if the government was funding a college, it must be offering a quality education. My experience organizing a debt strike and talking to borrowers who attended colleges of all kinds has taught me that the problem is larger than scam schools. The for-profit college industry is part of a larger system of higher education that often promises the world while failing to deliver for students like me who don’t come from wealthy backgrounds.

Just like former Corinthian students won by turning our individual struggles into a collective demand, I believe we can win even more if student debtors from colleges of all kinds fight back together. We can demand a more fair and just higher education system and an end to the for-profit schools that prey on low-income students.

College Inc. Redux is Overdue

We desperately need a PBS Frontline updating of College Inc. This 2010 documentary by Martin Smith and Rain Media took us behind the curtains, into the big business of US for-profit higher education. At the time, College Inc. made an important statement: that for-profit higher education had become a racket, funded by greedy Wall Street investors, and that government oversight was necessary to rein in the worst abuses at schools like Corinthian Colleges and Ashford University.

 

 

From 2010 to 2012, the Senate Harkin Commission researched and exposed the systemic abuses of the largest for-profit colleges. And under President Obama, some of these abuses were addressed through policy changes at the US Department of Education, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Department of Defense. 

 

Times Have Changed, Not In a Good Way

 

Much has happened in the last decade and a half since College Inc. was produced. US higher education did not become less predatory, even as a number of for-profit colleges (Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, Art Institutes, Le Cordon Bleu, and Virginia College) were shuttered. Republicans worked to ensure that meaningful policy changes, like gainful employment safeguards, were blocked. And some of the worst predators (Kaplan and Ashford) morphed into businesses owned by state universities (Purdue and University of Arizona).

 

Online education has become pervasive despite concerns about its effectiveness. Content creators and facilitators have replaced instructors at large robocolleges like Southern New Hampshire University, Grand Canyon University, Liberty University Online, and the University of Phoenix. 

 

The for-profit (aka neoliberal) mentality has spread. Online Program Managers (OPMs) have brought for-profit education to non-profit institutions, carrying with it an enormous cost to consumers. Advertising and marketing has become out of control, helping fuel a manufactured College Mania of anxious parents and their children. 

 

Despite the College Mania, folks have become more skeptical of higher education, and for good reason. Student loan debt has further crippled the lives of millions of Americans as Republicans have stepped in to block debt forgiveness. Community colleges and some state universities have gone through significant enrollment declines. Small colleges have closed. And elite colleges have become more wealthy and powerful and controversial. Something not on the radar in the 2010 documentary or in popular culture at the time. 

Student Loans in the US: A Trillion Dollar Tragedy (Glen McGhee)

Adam Looney and Constantine Yannelis have reopened their research on the student loan mess with a new paper from Brookings titled "What went wrong with federal student loans?" The paper talks about what went tragically wrong with student loans in the United States from 2000 to 2020. 

Here are the key points:

1. More people started going to college, especially those who didn't have a lot of money or whose parents didn't go to college. [See note below]
2. To pay for college, many of these new students had to borrow money from the government through student loans.
3. A lot of these new students went to for-profit schools. These are schools that are run like businesses to make money, unlike regular public or non-profit colleges.
4. The problem is that many of these for-profit schools didn't provide a good education. Their students often didn't graduate or couldn't find good jobs after finishing school.
5. Because these students couldn't get good jobs, they had trouble paying back their loans. This caused a big problem for the government and the students.




Now, let's look at Figure 3 Panel B:
This graph shows how many first-generation college students (students whose parents didn't go to college) enrolled in different types of schools. The schools are grouped by how well their students could repay loans. The red line at the bottom represents the best schools - where students usually paid back their loans easily. You can see this line barely goes up over time. The dark blue line at the top represents the worst schools - where students had the most trouble paying back loans. This line goes way up, especially after 2000.

What this means is that a lot of first-generation students, who often didn't have much money to begin with, ended up at the schools where they were least likely to succeed and most likely to have trouble with their loans.

The for-profit schools took advantage of this situation. They aggressively recruited these students, knowing they could get money from government loans. But they didn't focus on giving students a good education or helping them get jobs. Instead, they just wanted to make money for themselves.

This led to a big increase in student debt problems, especially for students who were already at a disadvantage.

Note: This statement refers to trends in college enrollment that occurred in the early 2000s through about 2012. Let me explain the reasons behind this trend and whether it's still true today:

Reasons for Increased College Enrollment
1. Policy Changes: Starting in the late 1990s, policymakers weakened regulations that had previously constrained institutions from enrolling aid-dependent students[1]. This made it easier for more people to access federal student aid and enroll in college.
2. Economic Factors:
- The persistently high return to college education over the last several decades increased demand for higher education[1].
- During economic downturns like the 2001 recession and the Great Recession starting in 2007, the opportunity cost of enrollment was low due to weak labor markets[1].
3. Supply Expansion: The supply of programs surged, particularly open access institutions, online programs, and graduate programs[1]. Many of these new programs were targeted at non-traditional student populations.
4. Demographic Shifts: Between 1990 and 2010, the number of high school graduates increased by 34%[1].

Is it Still True?
The trend of increased college enrollment, especially among disadvantaged groups, has partially reversed since its peak:
1. Overall Enrollment: By 2020, total undergraduate enrollment had declined back to near its level in 2000[1].
2. Demographic Changes:
- Black undergraduate enrollment in 2020 remains only modestly higher than in 2000 - about 10% greater[1].
- White undergraduate enrollment in 2020 was below its level in 2000[1].
- Hispanic enrollment almost doubled between 2000 and 2020[1].
3. First-Generation Students: While 60% of postsecondary students were first-generation in 2000, this share declined to 56% in 2020[1].
4. For-Profit Sector: Enrollment at for-profit institutions, which had surged between 2000 and 2012, has since declined significantly[1].

In summary, while there was a significant increase in college enrollment, especially among disadvantaged groups, from 2000 to 2012, this trend has partially reversed in recent years. However, some changes, like increased Hispanic enrollment, have persisted. The overall landscape of higher education enrollment continues to evolve, influenced by economic conditions, policy changes, and demographic shifts.

Citations:
[1] https://ppl-ai-file-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/web/direct-files/238393/f60f1373-2266-45ed-8960-6656ba110b38/paste.txt
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/first-generation-college-students-face-unique-challenges/
[3] https://www.capturehighered.com/client-blog/landscape-in-flux-2024-enrollment-trends/
[4] https://medicat.com/why-first-gen-college-students-need-extra-support/
[5] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/05/23/pew-study-finds-more-poor-students-attending-college
[6] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/education/online-colleges/first-generation-college-students-by-state/
[7] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cpb/college-enrollment-rate

Carl Barney, Ex-Owner of Deceptive For-Profit Colleges, Donates Big to Trump (David Halperin)

Carl Barney, the ultra-wealthy former owner of a chain of collapsed for-profit colleges, is the third biggest California-based donor to efforts to elect Donald Trump in 2024, the Los Angeles Times reports today.

Barney has donated $924,600 to the Trump 47 Committee, according to federal records.

Like Donald Trump, who in 2016 paid $25 million to settle civil charges by New York’s attorney general that his unaccredited real estate school, Trump University, defrauded its students, Barney saw his schools shut down after law enforcement agencies and former students went to court over claims of deceptive practices.

Barney explained his reasons for supporting Trump in a fascinating post last month on his personal website.

According to Barney, Trump “approaches the job of President as a businessman, not a politician,” which Barney sees as “mostly a major strength.”

“I’m aware of President Trump’s shortcomings,” Barney acknowledges, “but I won’t criticize him here. (If you want criticism, you’ll find all you need in the popular ‘news’ media.)”

Barney evaluates Trump’s term in office and concludes that the ex-president “significantly improved the individual freedom of Americans to pursue their goals with less government hindrance.”

While Barney concedes that he does not like Trump’s “proposed tariffs and some of his economics,” he likes that Trump “wants to work with Elon Musk to reduce spending, regulations, waste, and fraud in the federal government.

What doesn’t Barney like about Kamala Harris? A number of things, but he zeroes in on this: “Kamala Harris is an avowed enemy of private career colleges and boasts about closing them. Her boasts reveal her disregard for the schools’ students and teachers, as well as the entrepreneurs and investors who created the schools.” Harris, Barney concludes, “holds the anti-freedom values common to radical leftists.” He warns, “These people hate profit, business, and businessmen.”

Barney prepares his audience for the attacks he will face for his endorsement. “Since my contribution to President Trump will be public,” he writes, “I know that I will become more of a political target than I’ve been over the last 10 years. I’ve been a target of trolls, lawfare, and political operatives who finally destroyed my beautiful colleges. I know they will now target me with renewed force and energy. That’s something I will have to confront.”

Barney concludes his post with this unifying message, “If anyone sees something wrong with Making America Great Again (MAGA), then they’re not friends of mine, nor of yours.”

While Barney’s focus on Harris’s role in taking on abusive for-profit colleges is no surprise, his identification of fighting government waste, fraud, and abuse as a key policy priority for him is particularly rich, given his role in running a college operation, the Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), that received billions in federal taxpayer dollars and ultimately was found liable for deceiving students — and given his schools’ troubling conversion to tax-free non-profit status in a deal that increased his staggering wealth.

In August 2020, following an extensive trial, a Colorado state court sided with that state’s attorney general and found CEHE, its CollegeAmerica school, Carl Barney, and CEHE CEO Eric Juhlin liable for deceptive practices and awarded a $3 million judgment.

The Colorado court found that Barney’s schools used a detailed playbook to manipulate vulnerable students into enrolling in high-priced, low-quality programs; that the schools directed admissions representatives to “enroll every student,” regardless of whether the student would likely graduate; that the schools’ recruiters and advertisements greatly overstated starting salaries that graduates could earn; and that the schools falsely inflated graduation rates.

In April 2021, Independence’s accreditor, ACCSC, ended its approval of Independence University, which by then was CEHE’s main school, effectively repealing its eligibility for federal student grants and loans. Soon after, the U.S. Department of Education restricted the flow of such aid. In the wake of those developments, CEHE shut down classes and laid off most staff.

CEHE and the Colorado attorney general’s office were back in the state trial court in Denver this week, after high-priced lawyers for Barney pursued an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court that resulted in an order requiring the trial judge to make some additional findings.

Barney also used clever lawyers and accountants to keep making big money off the CEHE schools even after he converted them to non-profit status. When for-profit operations are converted to non-profit in such a manner, U.S. taxpayers can pay a big price.

Although its schools are shuttered, CEHE still faces additional legal challenges. The U.S. Justice Department is moving ahead with a long-pending lawsuit in which it has joined whistleblowers in pursuing False Claims Act fraud charges against the schools. The federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has pursued a separate investigation into CEHE’s private loan practices.

CEHE, despite the probes, bad publicity, and collapse of its schools, has continued trying to collect the high-interest private loan debt it created for its broke former students.

And CEHE has portrayed itself as a victim of a political conspiracy against it, with ongoing vitriol on Twitter from former CEO Eric Juhlin, whom the Department of Education took the rare step of suspending from federal contracting. More attacks on CEHE critics, and the Colorado attorney general office and court, have come from Barney.

Barney has charged on his grievance-heavy blog that the case brought by the Colorado AG against his schools is a “horror story of government corruption,” and “a multi-agency collusion to put schools out of business” — a supposed plot that involved not only a senior assistant Colorado attorney general, but also the executive director of accreditor ACCSC, officials of the U.S. Department of Eduction, and “the cabal of progressive haters of private colleges (David Halperin, Robert Shireman, entities funded by Arnold Ventures, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Sen. Richard Durbin).”

In December 2022, CEHE took its grievance campaign to a new low by suing the United States government for $500 million in the U.S. Court of Claims, asserting, as a press release statement by Juhlin contended, that the Department of Education “in coordination with ideological confederates… has been on a campaign to cripple and close as many private career colleges as possible” and that CEHE’s schools were “a victim of this campaign.”

As we reported yesterday, billionaire Betsy DeVos, who helped Barney and other predatory college operators as Donald Trump’s secretary of education but resigned over Trump’s incitement of the deadly January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, recently donated $250,000 to America PAC, the pro-Trump super PAC created by Musk.

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