Emails Show DeVos Aides Pulled Strings for Failing For-Profit Colleges
WASHINGTON — Dream Center Education Holdings, a subsidiary of a Los Angeles-based megachurch, had no experience in higher education when it petitioned the federal Education Department to let it take over a troubled chain of for-profit trade schools.
But the organization’s chairman, Randall K. Barton, told the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, that the foundation wanted to “help people live better lives.”
The purchase was blessed despite Dream Center’s lack of experience and questionable finances by an administration favorable to for-profit education. But barely a year later, the company tumbled into insolvency, dozens of its colleges closed abruptly and thousands of students were left with no degree after paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.
Making matters worse, the college is accused of enrolling new students and taking their taxpayer-supported financial aid dollars even after some of its campuses had lost their accreditation, which rendered their credits worthless
Company emails, documents and recordings show that part of why Dream Center kept going is that it thought the Education Department, which under Ms. DeVos has rolled back regulations on for-profit education, would try to keep it from failing. Mr. Barton emailed other Dream Center executives that the department’s head of higher education policy — Diane Auer Jones, a former executive and lobbyist for for-profit colleges — had pulled strings to help the company’s schools in their effort to regain a seal of approval from an accreditor, despite their perilous positions.
In another instance, Dream Center’s chief operating officer told faculty at an endangered campus that Ms. Jones was changing departmental regulations to help the schools obtain accreditation retroactively.
Although the Trump administration did eventually cut off federal aid to the chain of colleges and precipitate their collapse, Democrats say the department failed to respond to warning signs.
Representative Robert C. Scott, a Virginia Democrat who is the chairman of the House Education Committee, unveiled a trove of CONTINUE READING: Emails Show DeVos Aides Pulled Strings for Failing For-Profit Colleges - The New York Times
