Lawsuit Accuses For-Profit Schools of Fraud

[frazzled]

1. This is why the WH has been aggressively fighting these schools since 2009

The Federal Trade Commission is getting tougher with for-profit colleges, opening a new front in the latest Obama administration-led attempt to crack down on the sector.
The independent agency functions as the federal government's primary consumer cop. Last week it released stricter guidelines on deceptive marketing practices by for-profit colleges that feature vocational programs. The commission advised colleges against misrepresentations about their accreditation status, transferability of credits, job placements, graduation rates or salaries of graduates.
The new standards followed a tip sheet the commission put out last month to help veterans and members of the military better scrutinize for-profits before enrolling.
Both releases included strong language.
“Not every school has got your back. Some for-profit schools may care more about boosting their bottom line with your VA education benefits,” Carol Kando-Pineda, a lawyer with the commission, wrote in a blog entry. “Some may even stretch the truth to persuade you to enroll, either by pressuring you to sign up for courses that don’t suit your needs or to take out loans that will be a challenge to pay off."


Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/14/federal-trade-commission-steps-scrutiny-profit-colleges#ixzz2tpstsqmZ
Inside Higher Ed

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/14/federal-trade-commission-steps-scrutiny-profit-colleges

As the Education Department gathers a panel to rewrite controversial for-profit college regulations, the motto might as well be “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
The quest to regulate those colleges defined most of President Barack Obama’s first term and continues into his second — although the last attempt at a crackdown in 2011 ended with a rule later thrown out in court. The department remains determined to hold for-profits accountable for their graduates’ debt burdens and ability to repay them. And the colleges are equally committed to fighting a process they say unfairly singled them out


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/scrutiny-again-for-for-profit-colleges-96432.html#ixzz2tptoehL7

After months of political wrangling, the U.S. Department of Education finalized on Thursday its highly contentious "gainful employment" rule, a crucial element of the Obama Administration's crackdown on the rapidly growing for-profit career-college industry.

The rule will strip federal financial aid dollars from vocational programs that load students with more debt than they can realistically repay. When it goes into effect in July 2012, it will join a batch of other previously announced regulations set to begin next month, which include preventing career-college recruiters from being paid based on the number of students they enroll and placing stricter requirements on states to monitor schools.



Read more: Obama Government Rule Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges - TIME http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2075324,00.html#ixzz2tpu8JDs3