Betsy DeVos has broken up the team investigating fraud at for-profit colleges. To neutralize the investigation, she appointed a veteran of a for-profit college to lead the team.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/education-department-for-profit-colleges.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Question: Why is she protecting the fraudsters instead of the students?

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, For-Profit, Higher Education

16 Comments Post your own or leave a trackback: Trackback URL

Lloyd Lofthouse says:

May 14, 2018 at 2:13 pm

“Why is she protecting the fraudsters instead of the students?”

Because Betsy doesn’t know any other life or world. She grew up in a family business built on fraud. Fraud seeps through her pores when she sweats … wait, does she sweat?

To her, Fraud and lies and bullying others to do what she wants is acceptable because mommy, daddy, and her husband have all done it.

The world the child Betsy grew up in was all based on lies and bully tactics. She doesn’t know any other way.

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- Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:
  
  May 14, 2018 at 5:44 pm
  
  She’s so sick and vapid.
  
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Marian Cruz says:

May 14, 2018 at 2:22 pm

DeVos, like the rest of Trump’s appointees, are out to cater to the 1% and destroy public education.

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BackAgain says:

May 14, 2018 at 2:39 pm

The information itself is predictable and boring. What is amusing is how come these people are still grabbing the levers of power? Is this how the system works – we elect a thug, he selects some other thugs, and then they can do whatever they want without any repercussions? What about three, well, four branches of power? Because this is not a problem of DeVos, it is a problem of the system not working.

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- Lloyd Lofthouse says:
  
  May 14, 2018 at 2:54 pm
  
  “Because this is not a problem of DeVos, it is a problem of the system not working.”
  
  Ah, the system was working quite well before NCLB came along followed by individuals like the corrupt, power-hungry elitist Betsy DeVos.
  
  The system was working and it was evolving but that all came to a stop with NCLB and people like the fascist, corrupted, autocrat Besty DeVos that is a member of the Alt-Right billionaire supremacist club, ALEC.
  
  I worked in that system starting in 1975 to 2005 and earned my teaching credential through a year-long urban residency. I taught in schools with extremely high child poverty rates. I taught in schools where white was the minority at less than 10 percent of the student population. I worked in teams with other teachers to create the best possible curriculum for our student population. We met often to share ideas and adjust. We used test scores to help guide our decisions but not make our decisions for us.
  
  Before President Ran-Guns fraudulent report called “A Nation at Risk”, the public schools where I taught were moving in the same direction that Finland has done with great success for decades.
  
  My first principal (his name was Ralph Pagan) believed in bottom-up decisions and encouraged teachers to form teams and work together to improve curriculum that addressed the challenges that walked into our classrooms on a daily basis.
  
  What we did worked! I repeat, What we did worked !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
  Then along came the very misleading “A Nation at Risk” report in 1983 followed eventually by NCLB and all the rest of the Common Core crap with creeps like Besty DeVos in charge .. FROM THE TOP DOWN! And the teachers’ voices were muted and buried under high stakes rank and punish testing dictated out of Washington DC while corporations like Pearson profited.
  
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Laura H. Chapman says:

May 14, 2018 at 2:51 pm

I know of no administration so bold and unapologetic about elevating profit and payola to principles for making decisions about governance.

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- ira shor says:
  
  May 14, 2018 at 3:23 pm
  
  Last 40 years has been a stealth coup against the Constitution, legal process, and democratic rights in the name of corporate thugs, theocratic fanatics, and private looting of the public sector. We are being dispossessed of our rights and our material goods. Bible Betsy is continuing the long neoliberal/evangelical project of “nullification” of secular humanism and govt. as a public regulator, watchdog, and protector of the commons. This has been a terrible thing to watch and fight these many decades.
  
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  - Duane E Swacker says:
    
    May 14, 2018 at 4:53 pm
    
    YEP!
  - ciedie aech says:
    
    May 15, 2018 at 1:15 pm
    
    and harder to watch once we know what to look for: every year it becomes more transparent
Laura H. Chapman says:

May 14, 2018 at 3:06 pm

But then there is also this– public funding of religious indoctrination on the horizon …

https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/05/14/faith-based-universities-path-government-funding/?utm_source=cerkl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter-05142018&cerkl_id=1797538&cerkl_ue=w1lgssYRVwl8i%2FeQbiv%2FZmiPaHKDzoxEmIN9XO1ojxA%3D

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Chiara says:

May 14, 2018 at 4:20 pm

Here’s a good piece on how many adults are making a living loading up college students with debt:

” Democrat Alfred Mottur and his team at Brownstein Hyatt got $40,000 last quarter from Phoenix’s operator, Apollo Education Group, and another $280,000 from various components of Apollo Global Management, one of Apollo Education’s new owners. Democrat Steve Elmendorf, who runs the lobby firm Subject Matter, got another $50,000 from Apollo Education, while Crossroads Strategies, which includes Jake Perry, a former “senior political advisor and confidante” to ex-Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (D-NV), got another $50,000, and Penn Hill Group, which includes Alex Nock, a former Democratic deputy staff director of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor under Representative George Miller (D-CA), got $40,000. (The same Penn Hill team also lobbies for for-profit Laureate Education ― $20,000 in the same period.) The company also reports $310,000 for the last quarter in in-house lobbying, with staffers Joanna Acocella and Conwey Casillas listed.”

Read the whole thing. There are hundreds of them. The lobbying alone is a large predatory industry.

This is why they can’t offer any value to students. They have to pay thousands of adults who do nothing all day but buy politicians.

They’re corrupt. It’s a corrupt system and it benefits no one but the players.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/whos-lobbying-for-for-profit-colleges-in-the-trump_us_5953cef6e4b0c85b96c65e53

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Chiara says:

May 14, 2018 at 4:26 pm

I tell college students not to accept direction or counsel from anything the US Department of Education puts out.

They’re no longer a credible source of information for the public. They made themselves useless by hiring people who are pushing products.

If we want a sales pitch we’ll find a salesperson. I will never understand why the US Department of Education decided it was their job to sell over-priced garbage to 18 year olds. They are now of no practical use to anyone who needs reliable information on college.

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carolmalaysia says:

May 14, 2018 at 4:46 pm

Betsy is having taxpayer money wasted to the tune of $1 million a month for security. The following just came out in WaPo. Looks like Trump has picked another winner who needs extra security for being hated so much.

“…he has experienced notably more threats than previous administrators.”

Trump picks the absolute best!! Great intuition. Who needs clean air, water or a livable environment?
………………………
EPA chief Scott Pruitt requested and received 24/7 security — costing over $3 million — starting on his first day at the agency
The Environmental Protection Agency administrator began receiving round-the-clock security from the moment he took office in February 2017, the agency’s inspector general revealed.

“EPA’s Protective Service Detail began providing 24/7 coverage of the Administrator the first day he arrived,” Inspector General Arthur Elkins wrote in response to inquiries from Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) and Thomas R. Carper (Del.) about what threats prompted Pruitt’s nonstop security. The decision was made at Pruitt’s request, Elkins noted.

The inspector general’s office, which investigates threats made against any EPA employees, “played no role in this decision,” Elkins added.

The EPA could not immediately be reached for comment. But agency officials, including Pruitt, have said repeatedly that he has experienced notably more threats than previous administrators.

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Yvonne Siu-Runyan says:

May 14, 2018 at 5:42 pm

Becuz she wants to open up DeVoodoo University and DUMPSTER College. After all, they both have a lot of “slime and crime” to teach.

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Susan Lee Schwartz says:

May 14, 2018 at 9:37 pm

DeVos is a charaltan. Period. She and the poor elite billionaires, the oligarchs who run this nation, think of the people of this nation as serfs who do the work, and re expendable. They deserve nothing.

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SomeDAM Poet says:

May 15, 2018 at 9:57 am

“For-Profit Colleges”

Junk degrees
And crushing debts
About as sleaz
Zee as it gets

Phoenix flies
Then turns to ash
But never dies
In hunt for cash

“Predator Loans”

Mortgages and student loans
Target folks with killer drones
Dropping bombs of heavy debt
Killing dreams for profit net

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