What Michelle Ree Said to For-profit Colleges
by Daniel Luzer
In April I reported that Michelle Rhee, the controversial former superintendent of Washington, DC public schools, would be speaking at a meeting of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, the government relations umbrella group of for-profit colleges in the United States.
She promised to tell for-profit colleges “the hard truths they need to hear” at their annual conference this month at Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. It didn’t really work out like that.
That decision to speak at the conference was, of course, entirely Rhee’s prerogative. If she believes America’s for-profit colleges, which enroll only 12 percent of students but generate about 45 percent of student loan defaults, are a great trend in higher education, she has every right to say so. The fact