DeVos' Deregulation Helps For-profit Colleges Defraud Students

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Katherine Clark just released the DeVos Watch, summarizing the secretary of education's first year in office as riddled with conflicts of interest and questionable ethics. Massachusetts' members of Congress aren't the only ones keeping a close eye on Betsy DeVos. Those of us who work with low-income students have witnessed with dismay as she has quietly dismantled protections that keep people from being defrauded by for-profit colleges. Instead of safeguarding policies to hold schools accountable to students, we are entering a new Wild West of higher education. Snake oil purveyors can line up at the door, as common-sense practices like requiring schools to disclose the median income data of graduates fall away. For-profit schools are the big winners. The big losers are students, who seek a better future through the promise of higher education, and taxpayers, who fund sometimes more than 90 percent of these operations posing as schools.   Continue reading...