Accreditation

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OMFG PJT 2025 IS INSIDE THE WIRE DEEP SYSTEMIC ATTACK

NBC 3 25

WASHINGTON — Two of President Donald Trump’s allies have launched bids for leadership roles with the D.C. Bar Association, an under-the-radar effort that would give them more control over the influential legal group.

The push comes amid bar associations’ confrontations with the Trump administration, and some federal attorneys have looked to their state groups for ethical guidance amid Trump’s rapid reshaping of government.

Bradley Bondi — a lawyer who is Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother — and Alicia Long — a deputy to Ed Martin, Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — are running for president and treasurer. The election runs from April to June, according to the organization’s website.

While the general public may not pay much attention to bar associations, lawyers do. The nongovernmental groups decide who gets to be a lawyer — and who gets to stay a lawyer when misconduct allegations are involved. The D.C. Bar, as it is known, has more than 120,000 members, and, by virtue of its location, it is where a significant number of federal attorneys are licensed.

The effort to take control of the D.C. Bar follows warnings Trump administration officials have directed at bar associations, which lawyers inside and outside the government have suggested could play a role in slowing down legally questionable elements of Trump’s agenda.

On one of her first days as attorney general, Pam Bondi warned career lawyers that they could be fired for refusing to carry out orders because of any personal objections. Meanwhile, the D.C. Bar maintains a confidential legal ethics hotline for members to submit concerns.

In a statement to NBC News after this article published, Bondi pledged to protect the D.C. Bar from being politicized and noted that he has been an active member of the organization for 26 years.

"The Bar has a non-partisan mission, which I intend to vigilantly protect against any push to politicize it," he said.

"My effort to run for DC Bar president began months before the federal elections and has no connection with national politics at all. With my six years of DC Bar leadership — having been elected two times to a Bar leadership position — three years in public service, and over 20 years in private practice and as a law professor, my record of serving the legal community with that integrity is plain to see," he added.

Bondi also said he wants to focus on "efficiency and practical benefits," including "free on-demand continuing legal education for all 50 states" and more educational programs and pro-bono opportunities.

"This isn’t about politics; I’m running to help strengthen our profession and support members of the Bar no matter what their beliefs or backgrounds," he said.

Bondi and Long each face one opponent. If elected, they would join the professional organization’s 23-person Board of Governors. Though the D.C. Bar does not have a direct role in disciplining lawyers for misconduct, its board does recommend members to sit on the D.C. Board of Professional Responsibility, the disciplinary arm of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals.

Disciplinary cases are brought forward by a separate Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates and prosecutes ethical complaints against lawyers.

With Republicans in control of the House and the Senate, bar discipline could be one of the last remaining ways to hold Trump-appointed attorneys accountable. On Thursday, a group of Democratic senators wrote a letter to the Office of Disciplinary Counsel expressing “grave concerns” about some of the highly unusual steps Martin has taken since he became interim U.S. attorney. The letter accused him of “serious violations of professional conduct” and abusing his position. Martin did not respond to requests for comment.

Some Trump attorneys have faced sanctions in Washington for their actions. Rudy Giuliani was disbarred in Washington last year in the wake of his efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss; a committee of the Board on Professional Responsibility found that what it called his “utter disregard for facts denigrates the legal profession.”

Jeffrey Clark — a former Justice Department lawyer whom Trump tried to make attorney general in the days before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack — appeared before the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility last year and invoked the Fifth Amendment. A panel made a preliminary determination that he had committed an ethical violation and recommended in August that he be suspended from practicing law for two years. With Trump back in the White House, Clark is now acting administrator of the White House Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.

And a Republican report issued in December by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, of Georgia, alleged possible coordination between House Jan. 6 investigators and the D.C. Bar to target an attorney who represented a former Trump White House aide. (The Office of Disciplinary Counsel dismissed that complaint last year.)

Trump administrationTrump signs order to gut Voice of America, other agencies

Bondi’s and Long’s bids quickly caused some alarm among attorneys in Washington. An email seen by NBC News and sent to dozens of Washington-area lawyers — and also shared on social media — described the duo as “Trump/Pam Bondi loyalists” who were “making a bid to take over the DC Bar” and encouraged recipients to pay attention and vote.

An attorney at a federal agency said the pro-Trump effort to win leadership positions at the D.C. Bar suggests the administration “may be getting pushback internally” from lawyers who are concerned about potential professional consequences for carrying out Trump’s agenda.

“They know this is a potential weakness,” this person added.

Bondi and Long did not respond to requests for comment. NBC News has reached out to the D.C. Bar for comment.

Bondi’s opponent, Diane A. Seltzer, an attorney with a focus on employment law who already serves on the D.C. Bar’s Board of Governors, said she decided to run because she saw it as the culmination of decades of bar leadership experience at a critical time in history.

“I want to be able to support the members of our bar in this time of governmental chaos,” she said. “Our legal system needs a bar that understands and sees them and can support them in ways that will be helpful and keep everyone’s energy up and keep people from giving up or burning out.”

The D.C. Bar does not control the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, but anyone can submit a complaint there, which is then heard by the Board of Professional Responsibility. The D.C. Bar seeks candidates for the Board of Professional Responsibility, but the D.C. Court of Appeals ultimately chooses the candidates.

There are fears among some Washington lawyers, however, that with Trump-supporting officials in place, the D.C. Bar might choose to ignore Court of Appeals rulings or orders from the Office of Disciplinary Counsel.

“I would never want to be president of a bar that could do that or that would do that,” Seltzer said. “I wouldn’t want to be president of a bar where those lines could be blurred and we would say, ‘I am not going to follow what the Court of Appeals has decided or what the Office of Disciplinary Counsel has ordered.’”

The disciplinary process can be protracted. Jennifer Kerkhoff Muyskens — a former assistant U.S. attorney in Washington who led the aggressive prosecution of anti-Trump protesters arrested en masse during Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 — is only now facing a disciplinary hearing eight years later, accused of hiding exculpatory evidence from defendants.

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The Trump administration has had a contentious relationship with bar associations, and Republicans have long accused them of having a left-wing bent — tensions that reached a boiling point in Trump’s first term when the American Bar Association, the national bar organization, rated several of his judicial picks as “not qualified” for the jobs they were nominated for.

Project 2025 took aim at the American Bar Association in its policy road map for a future conservative administration, calling for the president to issue an executive order pursuing antitrust measures against it. In one of his first moves as president, Trump signed an executive order that said bar associations could be targeted for investigations over their diversity programs.

Last month, the American Bar Association lambasted what it described as the Trump administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself.” After billionaire Elon Musk, who is overseeing Trump’s effort to reshape government, called for judges who have ruled against Trump to be impeached, the ABA said in a new statement Tuesday that it would “not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not.” It added that such attempts at intimidation “cannot be sanctioned or normalized.”

On Wednesday, Chad Mizelle, the Justice Department’s chief of staff, punched back at the ABA, posting to X that “they disguise their advocacy as work to ‘promote the best quality legal education, competence, ethical conduct and professionalism, and pro bono and public service work in the legal profession,’ but they never mention that they also work hand-in-hand on left-wing causes.”

He also wrote that the bar association’s “dedication to left-wing activism undermines justice” and that under the attorney general’s “leadership, DOJ is carrying out President Trump’s executive orders putting an end to radical DEI programs, and we’re all over the ABA’s illegal and immoral diversity mandates for law school accreditation.”

In 2020, the ABA rated Mizelle’s wife, Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, as “not qualified” to serve as a U.S. district court judge in Florida. She was 33 at the time and the youngest person Trump had tapped for the lifetime appointment. She was confirmed to the seat in November 2020.

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OMG

an 3 26

Former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance is disputing a Wednesday claim by President Donald Trump's administration that it can sideline investigations by Bar Associations around the country.

According to Bloomberg Law, the Justice Department is working to "suspend stat bar ethics investigations" targeting DOJ lawyers. The DOJ has clashed with judges across the U.S. and judgment, behavior and legal violations have prompted complaints to state Bar Associations as a result.

According to the proposal, which was posted in the Federal Register on Wednesday, the DOJ wants to do its own internal review of the lawyers rather than the regulatory association. Critics see it as diminishing the power of the Bar Associations as a whole.

Commenting on the report on X, Vance called it "bunk."

"State bars license attorneys and consider misconduct allegations. Historically, state bars have deferred to DOJ‘s internal discipline process as a courtesy, but they are not obligated to, and the AG has zero authority to suspend state bar operations," Vance said about Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"DOJ can’t avoid investigation and incredible allegations of clear, ethical violations, like lying to or misleading judges and failing to follow court orders if state bars want to pursue them," Vance added. "The process is usually long and involves wrist slaps instead of jumping straight to disbarment, but egregious cases deserve serious discipline."

University of Michigan Law School Professor Barbara McQuade agreed.

"All DOJ lawyers are members of a state or DC bar, and subject to its ethics rules and penalties, up to disbarment. Subverting state bar authorities would give DOJ lawyers carte blanche to violate ethics rules," she said about the report.

Self-described "recovering lawyer" Jeff Jacobs commented, "You would think that, given the ethical implications of many of the actions by this DOJ and its state-licensed attorneys, the administration would go out of its way to avoid antagonizing state bar associations."

In January, the Texas Supreme Court ended the 42-year reliance on the American Bar Association for law school accreditation because the ABA has diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements. Florida has now done the same. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has proposed his own accreditor for Florida law schools instead.

If Bondi's proposal moves forward after a public comment period, “whenever a third party files a bar complaint alleging that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s duties for the Department, or whenever bar disciplinary authorities open an investigation into such allegations,” the attorney general “will have the right to review the complaint and the allegations in the first instance,” it states.

Bondi is calling ethics probes into attorneys at the DOJ part of an anti-Trump "weaponization" effort.

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RRU dead again

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/betsy-devos/

kos

Reagan National University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is no longer an accredited university. To anyone with half an education, this is no surprise. The only reason the school had received accreditation in the first place was because under previous Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the dubious Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools (ACICS) was resurrected to give it the distinction. This is a school that USA Today investigated and found had "no students, no faculty and no classrooms."

On June 2, the Biden administration's Education Department announced that Reagan National University lost its accreditation and would no longer receive federal funds for the no students, no classrooms, and no faculty that it never had. In fact, Deputy Undersecretary for Education Jordan Matsudaira wrote that ACICS would no longer be recognized as a worthwhile arbiter of which schools should and should not receive federal funds. "ACICS's significant and systemic non-compliance with multiple regulatory recognition criteria leaves me no reasonable option but to terminate its recognition, effective immediately."

After the ACICS had accredited ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges, and Brightwood College—all for-profit schools that closed after stealing billions from students and cheating them out of an education—President Barack Obama stripped the agency of its powers. DeVos and Donald Trump then reinstated the disgraced agency's powers, and one of the first places ACICS accredited was the student and faculty-free Reagan National University. As *USA Today* found when they investigated the school last year:

The university's president – Harold Harris, per the school's website – was similarly invisible. University presidents often serve as an institution's public face. The only face on Reagan National's site was the institution's namesake U.S. president. The president of the university on the South Dakota business license was listed as "Xuanhua Fan."

Only the best people. The Biden administration's move means that about 60 colleges that received their accreditation from ACICS will now have "18 months to find a new accreditor if they want to keep accessing federal money." For its part, ACICS told the press that it will be appealing this decision and, according to a statement put on ACICS' website:

ACICS will appeal the SDO decision to the Secretary. We have worked too hard over the past five years to strengthen our organization, our accountability, our procedures, and accreditation criteria not to fight this decision. All that we ask is that a decision regarding our continued recognition be driven by the improvements we have made and our effectiveness as an accreditor today, not by policy priorities and outside pressure from political activists. Every accreditor should be given that opportunity. And every accreditor should be deeply concerned if our appeal to the Secretary is denied.

I mean, accrediting a school with no faculty and no student body is "no bueno." (That's first-year, high school language Spanish for "no good.") Maybe ACICS will give me accreditation as a Spanish language teacher? They shouldn't, but they just might!

Career staffers at the Education Department concluded in January that the ACICS had done a poor job of training employees to conduct site visits, failed to address conflicts of interest and lacked the finances to sustain itself in the long term. Months later, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity in an 11-to-1 vote recommended the council be stripped of its authority.

The DeVos Education Department, like the rest of the Trump administration, seemed driven entirely by billionaire profiteering, using fearmongering and white supremacist dive and conquer tactics. Students, as a rule, disliked DeVos' ideas because it's hard to respect an adult who doesn't respect you. Like many in the last swamp-filled administration, DeVos seemed to either be so ignorant that she treated students like they did not know any better, or treated them that way because she thought they were unintelligent. Maybe it isn't a binary. Maybe she's just so ignorant that she believes everyone else is more ignorant than she?

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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/obama-closed-an-agency-that-accredited-a-university-with-no-faculty-or-students-then-betsy-devos-saved-it/

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Obama closed an agency that accredited a ‘university’ with no faculty or students. Then Betsy DeVos saved it

Written by Daily Kos February 16, 2020

If you have never heard of Reagan National University, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, you’re not alone. But like many small colleges you’ve never heard of, this one boasted (at least until this month) full accreditation as sanctioned by the federal government.

There’s just one small problem.

By all appearances, at present it has no students, no faculty and no classrooms.

As an investigation for USA Today by Chris Quintana and Shelly Conlon found, this institution of higher learning was accredited by the Department of Education under the auspices of Trump-appointed Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. Or more precisely, it was accredited by an “approved” and sanctioned agency of DOE with a track record so dismal that, back in the good old days (known as the “Obama administration”) when the federal government was actually being run by competent people who worked for the interests of American ciitizens, it had been summarily shuttered and put out to pasture.

The agency in question, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools, has a history of approving questionable colleges, with devastating consequences. It accredited ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges and Brightwood College, massive for-profit universities whose sudden closures last decade left thousands of students without degrees and undermined the value of the education of those who did graduate. Those closures led President Barack Obama’s Education Department to strip ACICS’ powers in 2016.

After a Federal Judge ruled that the Obama Administration had failed to consider a substantial number of documents that ACICS had submitted to appeal its closure, DOE was ordered to reconsider its decision, which it did. DOE career employees again found that ACICS failed to meet appropriate standards in its accreditation process.

But by then Trump acolyte and billionaire-by-marriage Betsy DeVos, who, following standard Trump-appointee procedure, was proceeding to reverse every single action taken by the prior administration, no matter how sensible or helpful to the American people, had begun to remake the Department. DeVos reinstated the ACICS agency despite its horrid past record of promoting colleges that exist solely to rip off American students (usually poorer ones and disproportionately students of color).

Since its short-lived disbandment, the agency had lost many colleges as “members” and, as Quintana and Conlon note, lost their “membership fees” as well. It needed money, and fast. So, apparently it was time for some quick calls to those “institutes of higher learning” out there.

Accreditation is the key to obtaining federal grant and loan money for students who want to attend college. Of course, that money then goes straight to the “accredited” college. But as USA Today found out, “Reagan National University” is a very strange college. To begin with, when the reporters attempted to learn more about the college itself, its website links were all dead. They still are.

Adding further to the mystery, “[n]o students or graduates could be found on LinkedIn or Facebook.”

When USA Today tried to contact faculty from this so-called college, they could find none. People whose names were listed on the “college’s” website swore they’d never heard of or taught at Reagan National University. Other names had absolutely no internet history, something quite unusual for academics. Phone calls to the University ended in curtly disconnected lines. Attempts to physically visit the school were similarly unavailing, yielding locked offices. Peering through the window, a vacuum cleaner and some insulation were visible.

As the USA Today investigation found, ACICS specializes in accrediting “for profit” colleges, the same ones notorious for ripping off students with phony promises of inflated job prospects and providing worthless degrees. But since the Obama administration shut it down, its members have dwindled from 290 in 2016 to 63 at present. ACICS told USA Today that Reagan had somehow met its stringent accreditation standards, but it refused to provide any details on how that may have occurred.

Michelle Edwards, CEO and president of ACICS, defended the council’s accreditation process in emails this month to USA TODAY. ACICS first accredited Reagan in 2017, though Edwards said the university had to address some areas where it was initially out of compliance. She declined to say what those areas were.

But hey, ACICS pulled out all the stops to get Reagan National U. up to snuff! In January 2019, it sent an (apparently) sternly worded letter to its accredited so-called college, informing Reagan that its job placement rate was a whopping 0%. Of course, the agency’s standard procedure provided a window of time for an institution to “show cause” why its accreditation should not be pulled in such an instance. For Reagan, that “window” expired in May, 2019. According to the agency CEO, “Reagan” provided some sort of satisfactory information to ACICS (we’re not told what that was), and the “show cause” order was lifted.

But in December, 2019, ACICS really laid the hammer down.

This time accreditors raised concerns about the language in a course catalog and the university’s grading system. It also hinted at more existential issues, such as a lack of evidence of a qualified person to run the business programs. And the computer science program didn’t have the materials necessary to teach.

It’s not clear who ACICS was talking to at “Reagan,” if they were actually talking to anyone at all. This entire shoddy episode reeks of either purposeful negligence or something worse. As Antoinette Flores, with the Center for American Progress who studies accreditation asks, how could this agency possibly have accredited a “school” with no faculty and no students?: “You accredited this institution. How did you miss this?”

In February of 2020, while USA Today was conducting its investigation, “Reagan National University” voluntarily withdrew its accreditation.

The USA Today investigation found something that provides a clue to exactly what “Reagan National University” is. It seems that in 2011, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement visited another questionable institution, called the “University of Northern Virginia” on “suspicions” that it was operating to exploit the issuance of visas through legal loopholes for foreign visitors rather than acting as an actual educational institution. That university was shut down by the state of Virginia because of its lack of accreditation in 2013, but popped up again, listing an address in South Dakota—the same address used by “Reagan National” in its corporate filings. It even listed the name of its agent as “Xianhua Fan”, seemingly the same name as Reagan’s president (in its business filings spelled as “Xuanhua Fan,” although the official “website” listed president of the University was a fellow named “Harold Harris”).

South Dakota, as the authors of the USA Today article point out, is probably not the ideal place to go to college: “State officials merely ask colleges whether an accrediting group has approved them — they don’t independently hold universities accountable.”

If it seems that all of this should have been obvious to ACICS, the agency DeVos stepped in to save, it should. The article describes the many criticisms and problems that agency has, including denial of recognition by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, a university-member body that sets stringent standards for accreditation.

But ultimately, as the article notes, this is all traceable back to DeVos and the Trump administration philosophy of rolling back every regulation in favor of business interests, no matter who is harmed in the process.

The education secretary wants to cut back the rules governing accreditation. Fewer regulations could allow colleges to implement new training programs swiftly to fill holes in the workforce, she says — an approach cheered by for-profit colleges like the ones accredited by ACICS.

Critics argue these rollbacks will make it easier for shoddy or predatory institutions to take advantage of students. They have pointed to the high-profile closures of several for-profit colleges over the past decade as a need for more regulations to protect students, rather than fewer.

What this all boils down to has nothing to do with learning or “education,” and everything to do with political campaign contributions from the “for-profit” college mill industry and lining the pockets of the investors that fund such scam schools. As noted by Jeff Bryant of the Campaign for America’s future,”The favors Trump and DeVos are granting to the for-profit college industry reflect the generosity of campaign contributions the sector has generally showered on Republicans, especially since the advent of the regulatory constrains issued in the Obama years.”

And whether those colleges actually have any faculty or students, or whether they even can provide degrees, is apparently not a major concern.

https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/how-betsy-devoss-department-of-education-props-up-for-profit-educational-companies-and-help-financially-troubled-colleges-rip-off-veterans/

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How Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education helps financially troubled colleges rip off veterans

Written by Jillian Ambroz / DC Report August 2, 2019

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s move to reverse Obama-era restrictions on for-profit colleges and reinvigorate the shady industry has backfired spectacularly.

Since DeVos and team greenlighted the accreditation of one of the nation’s largest chains of for-profit colleges, Dream Center Education Holdings, and its purchase of schools, thousands of students have been affected by school closures and conversion to nonprofit status. One group of students that have been greatly affected are military veterans, who have racked up useless credits and massive debts that can become the burden of taxpayers and the federal government to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

The deregulation efforts of the for-profit college sector began back in 2017, soon after Dream Center—a charity affiliated with aLos Angeles-based megachurch with no higher-education experience—acquired some colleges from a major for-profit player in bankruptcy. DeVos had made it a priority to bolster for-profit schools, according to an article by The New York Times. In addition to relaxing oversight on the sector, DeVos also allowed for-profit schools to convert to non-profit status by loosening the rules of that process.

School closures also cost taxpayers and our federal government hundreds of millions of dollars in financial losses in discharged federal student loans.

It’s also come to light that a DeVos aide, Diane Auer Jones, a former lobbyist and executive for for-profit colleges, was granting personal favors to help Dream Center, which controls more than 100 campuses with 50,000 students, to help the company gain accreditation. DeVos, before becoming Education secretary, had invested in companies with ties to for-profit schools.

Back in 2016, Dream Center had its eyes on the failing ITT Technical Institutes but the Obama administration astutely blocked that acquisition as part of its crackdown on the for-profit college sector. And ITT ultimately shuttered its doors. But Dream Center found a new deal that would be blessed and moved forward by DeVos and team to purchase three large for-profit chains, the Art Institutes, Argosy University and South University from the bankrupt Education Management Corp.

Fast forward to the present. Dozens of Dream Center’s campuses are out of money and set to close, more than a dozen more campuses have already been sold—some to a New York private equity firm in a deal arranged by DeVos and team—and more than 40 other schools are under the control of a court-appointed receiver. In total, some 26,000 students have been affected by the demise of Dream Center Education Holdings.

Thousands of those students left scrambling to salvage their education plans are Post-9/11 GI Bill recipients, who are hard targets of the predatory for-profit schools because they can use the GI Bill funds to collect up to 100% in federal aid. For-profit schools must pull in at least 10% of their funding from sources outside of federal aid, the so-called 90/10 rule. But Congress wrote a big loophole, excluding GI Bill funding from the 90% limit, and for-profit schools actively seek-out veterans as students.

“For-profit schools really aggressively target veteran students and spend a ton on marketing, but spend little on instruction,” Walter Ochinko, research director at Veterans Educations Services, told DCReport. “They have large marketing teams that do robocalls all the time and use lead generators to reach out to veterans.”

With the closures of ITT Technical Institutes schools and the failing of Corinthian Colleges Inc., another 12,000 GI Bill students were affected by the failings of the for-profits in the past few years.

“Deregulation efforts have created a situation where vets are being harmed, they don’t have much recourse,” Ochinko said. “When a school closes, there’s only a partial restoration of benefits for veterans. Essentially they are left out in the cold.”

When these schools close, students transferring from for-profit to public schools could lose an estimated 94% of their credits. And if they retain their credits, they often don’t apply toward fulfilling their degree requirements toward their majors, according to a report filed in June by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). For many veteran students, school closures and transfers can exhaust their GI Bill benefits.

School closures also can cost the federal government and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in financial losses due to discharged federal student loans.

Lax Oversight

For GI Bill beneficiaries, the Department of Education works with the Veterans Business Affairs agency and State Approving Agencies (SAA), known as “the triad.” State Approving Agencies, state employees under contract with the VA, have the authority to shut down schools and remove GI Bill benefits, the VA does not. But DeVos’ deregulation efforts would undermine protections for GI Bill beneficiaries by making it more difficult for state approving agencies to hold schools accountable, according to a report by Veterans Education Success, which works with military service organizations to educate federal and state policymakers to ensure the success of the GI Bill and its beneficiaries.

The Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) conducted an audit of the Veterans Business Affairs and state approving agencies oversight of all programs for military veterans from February 2015 through January 2016, and estimated 44 of the 51 state agencies “did not adequately oversee the education and training programs to ensure only eligible programs participated in the Post-9/11 GI Bill program.”

The report, published in December 2018, found that out of an estimated $585 million paid for these “improper payments,” a staggering 81% or $473.8 million went to for-profit schools. If the Veterans Business Affairs agency does not implement oversight and better recommendations to the SAAs about $2.5 billion in related improper payments will go to potentially ineligible programs over the next five years, “putting billions of dollars at risk for fraud and waste and hindering efforts to provide quality education to eligible students,” according to the audit.

Poor Performance

Then there’s the problem of performance at these schools. The for-profit colleges examined in the GAO report showed the lowest graduation percentage of any type of college, at 22% for a four-year program, compared with 73% for public schools and 66% at nonprofit schools. Retention rates for full-time students also lagged, at 56%, compared with 88% for public schools and 85% for nonprofit schools.

The Department of Education recently filed a regulation in June stating plans to loosen requirements and oversight of accreditation agencies, which will only create more incentives for the Dream Centers of the nation.

“Essentially, they are up a creek,” Ochinko said. He and his organization, Veterans Education Success, recommend that Congress restore full benefits to GI Bill students in these circumstances.

Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) recently introduced a bill to close the 90/10 loophole at for-profit colleges, a small step in the right direction.

https://www.alternet.org/mike-lee-interstate-highways-civil-war-federalist-society

Mike Lee (R-UT), a member of the Judiciary Committee, one of the most libertarian members of the GOP caucus, is known for his out-of-mainstream positions on the Constitution. He has claimed that Medicare, Social Security, and child labor laws are unconstitutional. And he has justified this by arguing that the Constitution was "designed to be a little bit harsh."

But on Thursday, while giving the opening address to the right-wing Federalist Society, Lee made an even bolder claim: interstate highways must be abolished, or it could lead to civil war.

Lee's argument was that the Kavanaugh hearings, and the "evil" effort by Senate Democrats to investigate credible allegations of sexual assault against him, were indicative of the Left's greed for federal power — and this in turn was indicative of the fact that there is too much federal power period.

"For decades, we have pulled powers constitutionally reserved for the states and for the people into the federal government, and then, once they're here, we have transfered those from the people's elected lawmakers over to unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats, over to the administrative state," Lee complained. This, Lee argued, was part of a "fundamentally un-American contest" to "determine which half of our nation will have the power, at least temporarily, to unilaterally impose its will and its values on the other half," and “many on the left don’t seem too concerned," about it.

In his speech, documented by ThinkProgress, Lee warned that this state of affairs will make politics angrier and more violent until it eventually leads to a second civil war — and in order to prevent it, we must abolish several critical federal programs, including "the Interstate Highway System, "K through 12 public education," "federal higher education accreditation," "early childhood education," "the Department of Commerce," "housing policy," "workforce regulation," and the "huge glut of federally owned land."

Watch the full speech below: [vid]

Lee's belief that we must abolish highways has no basis in reality. As ThinkProgress notes, the Constitution gives Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes" to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States." Interstate highways, being the means with which people actually travel between and ship goods between the states, are the quintessential component of interstate commerce.

Moreover, it is a bit rich to hear Lee complain about the powers of the federal government given that he has consistently supported expanding federal powers in certain areas. For instance, he wants federal laws banning abortions past 20 weeks and restricting access for minors.

Although Lee's views are extreme, his views are dangerously close to taking root in the corridors of power. The Federalist Society, America's foremost association of conservative lawyers and judges, has played a substantial rolein choosing President Donald Trump's judicial nominees. And Lee himself was briefly considered by Trump as a possible pick for the Supreme Court.

http://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/educators-dismiss-alec/

Educators Dismiss ALEC

Justin| May 16, 2012

The National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA) will not renew their membership in the American Legislative Exchange Council, the organization said in a statement released on Tuesday. NACSA is the third major educational organization to drop their association with ALEC, joining Kaplan and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Both ALEC and NACSA support charter schools, but NACSA appears to have decided that ALEC’s extreme vision for charter school systems – which place corporate profitmaking above the needs of students, parents and communities – is out of touch with its mission to “advance excellence in public charters schools as a way to improve public education for all children.”

Rather than proposals designed to improve our public education system, ALEC’s model bills instead transfer public education funds into the hands of private corporations. Such proposals include voucher programs and publicly funded subsidies for religious and other private schools. ALEC’s Education Accountability Act would allow a state to override the elected school board and declare schools “educationally bankrupt,” then divert its funds to private schools. Of course, ALEC’s assault on public education wouldn’t be complete without attacks on teachers, school personnel and basic educational standards.

Just as important, there was never a legitimate reason for NACSA to support an organization that promotes legislation that attacks working families, rolls back consumer rights, blocks access to courts of law and disenfranchises thousands of eligible voters.

It’s not surprising that NACSA and other educators have concluded that ALEC is far more trouble than it’s worth.

interesting to see what org accred big for-profit fails

acta neal really into this nb lyne cheney fronts

eg nat rev

ANNE D. NEAL July 26, 2013 8:46 AM The congressional wheeling-and-dealing over student-loan interest rates has dominated the higher-ed headlines for weeks now. But the issue isn’t just student loan rates – it’s that students have far too much debt. Whatever Congress does, it won’t solve the problem of skyrocketing student indebtedness until it turns to the structural problems in higher ed. A good place to start: breaking the link between federal student aid and accreditation. Our current college accreditation system turns regional accrediting agencies into the gatekeepers of federal dollars. Not only have these accreditors failed to assure academic quality, but they drive up institutional expenses while discouraging new delivery models that could actually cut costs. If students are ever going to escape the crushing burden of college debt, then we can’t just subsidize loans – we need to lower the price of earning a degree. With the Higher Education Opportunity Act up for renewal in 2014, we finally have a chance to re-shape this distorted and out-dated system. ACTA has offered an alternative to the existing system in hearings; the Heritage Foundation, Hudson Institute, and New America Foundation have all published on the issue; some in the press are even beginning to lend their voices to the chorus. Let’s not miss this opportunity to put an end to this costly regulatory failure. Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/354338/breaking-accreditation-monopoly-anne-d-neal

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/354338/breaking-accreditation-monopoly-anne-d-neal

http://www.goacta.org/about/scholars

Ms. Neal cofounded the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and has been president since 2003.

For over 15 years, Ms. Neal has been a prominent national player in higher education reform, publishing widely and appearing frequently on radio and television, including Fox Business News, CNN, Fox News, WGN, and National Public Radio. She has authored or coauthored numerous ACTA studies on historical illiteracy, federal accreditation, governance, intellectual pluralism, and cost, and has contributed chapters to Reforming the Politically Correct University (AEI Press, 2009) and Accountability in American Higher Education (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010). She has also convened higher education conferences under the auspices of the Philanthropy Roundtable. In 2007, and again in 2010, Ms. Neal was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, which advises the U.S. Secretary of Education on federal accreditation.

Ms. Neal has providedexpert testimony before the Commission on the Future of Higher Education; the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; the Louisiana Postsecondary Education Commission; the California Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission; and in many state capitals. She has also presented at conferences sponsored by theAmerican Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the University of Notre Dame, the Foreign Policy Association, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, Montana State University, the American Association of University Professors, and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation.

Prior to joining ACTA, Ms. Neal served as general counsel and congressional liaison for the National Endowment for the Humanities. She also worked as a First Amendment and communications lawyer for Rogers & Wells and for Wiley, Rein & Fielding.

Ms. Neal graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in American history and literature. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was president of the Harvard Journal on Legislation. She has served on the boards of many cultural and civic organizations, and she is currently a director of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, and Casey Trees.

halperin

https://www.republicreport.org/2016/friends-in-high-places-who-endorses-americas-troubled-for-profit-colleges/

https://www.republicreport.org/author/david-halperin/

acis done

Federal Committee Votes to Terminate Troubled College Accreditor

An Education Department advisory committee took the unprecedented step of calling on the government to revoke powers of for-profit college accreditor.

by Annie Waldman

ProPublica, June 24, 2016, 12:07 p.m.7 Comments

One of the nation’s largest, and most criticized, accreditors of for-profit colleges was pushed a step closer to being shuttered on Thursday.

In a historic move, an Education Department advisory panel voted 10–3 to recommend that the government deauthorize the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools. The committee came to its decision after nearly 11 hours of public testimony and deliberations, much of the time spent dissecting the numerous instances in which the accreditor failed to adequately monitor its colleges.

“When we see schools provide extremely poor outcomes for students — or even commit fraud — while maintaining accreditation, that is a black mark on the entire field,” said Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell in the opening remarks of the advisory meeting, which began on Wednesday morning.

The federal committee hearing, also known as the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, or NACIQI, took place just a few days after Education Department staff released a report also recommending that the government cut ties with the accreditor.

The recommendations aren’t binding but they are likely to carry significant weight and a clock is now ticking: A senior department official now has three months to make the ultimate decision on ACICS’ fate.

ACICS has faced growing scrutiny for the weak student outcomes of the colleges it accredits. A ProPublica analysis found that schools accredited by ACICS have the lowest graduation rates in the country and their graduates struggle the most to repay their student loans.

In the weeks leading up to Thursday’s meeting, numerous critics have called on the Education Department to revoke recognition of the accreditor, including more than a dozen state attorneys general, over 20 consumer protection and student advocacy groups, and several members of Congress.

The Department of Education’s recent report also found that ACICS came up short in monitoring potential conflicts of interest of its board members. As ProPublica reported, two-thirds of ACICS’ commissioners, who are ultimately responsible for schools’ accreditation, worked as executives at for-profit colleges.

Responding to the growing chorus of criticism, ACICS announced earlier this month that it would stop accrediting new schools while it undertook reforms, which included tougher review standards and the creation of a new committee to police conflicts of interest.

“ACICS takes seriously the concerns about the need for greater accountability and transparency in higher education,” the agency’s top executive, Anthony Bieda, said during Thursday’s hearing.

But his agency’s reforms proved too little too late.

“The new standards will not be able to make up for the damage that has been done,” said Education Department staff member Chuck Mula during the meeting.

Accreditors are supposed to regulate college quality and their stamp of approval opens the spigot to billions in federal aid dollars. Losing accreditation can be a deathblow for colleges, particularly for the many for-profit schools that rely on federal aid programs for the majority of their income.

The ultimate decision on ACICS rests with Emma Vadehra, the chief of staff of the U.S. Secretary of Education John King. Should she decide to terminate ACICS’ authority, the hundreds of schools that ACICS accredits would have 18 months to find a new accreditor. ACICS oversees 240 institutions, which enroll hundreds of thousands of students.

Most ACICS schools will easily find new accreditation within the timeframe, but not all, said the Education Department’s head of accreditation Herman Bounds.

“It’s going to be those schools that are on the cuff, mediocre, may have performance issues,” said Bounds at the hearing. “I think those schools will be looked at more closely by the accreditors.”

Bounds said the department would try to assist schools during the new accreditation process.

But if a college still can’t get accreditation, the flow of federal aid dollars would be effectively cut off.

One of the nation’s largest for-profit schools, ITT Technical Institute, has suggested in recent regulatory filings that it may struggle to secure new accreditation should ACICS lose its recognition.

“We cannot assure you that our campuses could obtain accreditation by another recognized accrediting agency within that timeframe,” a company filing says. ITT enrolls over 40,000 students and received nearly $800 million in federal aid in 2013 alone.