About: David Halperin
Twitter: @DaHalperin
Bio: David Halperin, a self-employed lawyer based in Washington DC, engages in public advocacy work on a wide range of issues, including higher education and climate change. He also advises organizations and companies on strategy, policy, communications, and legal matters, and he is of counsel to Public.Resource.org.
Halperin was previously: founding director of Campus Progress and senior vice president at the Center for American Progress; senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's presidential campaign; founding executive director of the American Constitution Society; White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton; co-founder of the Internet company Progressive/RealNetworks; counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell.
He has represented clients in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state and federal courts.
He writes at Republic Report, and his articles also have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, Politico, Slate, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. In recent years he has testified before the House Oversight Committee and at the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Transportation, and spoken at major events held by the National Consumer Law Center, Consumer Federation of America, Arizona State University, American Educational Research Association, and Center for American Progress.
Halperin has served for more than a decade on the board of directors of Public Citizen.
He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.
Scam Over? Zovio/UAGC In Tailspin
Ashford University and its parent entity Zovio comprise a for-profit education operation that the chairman of a Senate committee branded “an absolute scam” during a 2011 investigative hearing highlighting the company’s deceptive advertising, predatory recruiting, high prices, and weak educational offerings. More than a decade later, after tens of thousands more students have used billions
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Calls Mount in Congress for Federal Probe of Keiser University
Senior leaders in the U.S. Congress, including the chairs of the House Veterans Affairs, House Education and Labor, and Senate Judiciary committees, have now called on the Department of Education to investigate Florida’s Keiser University and its controversial conversion from for-profit to non-profit — a deal that has continued to enrich the school’s politically powerful
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Former For-Profit College Recruiter: Industry’s Mantra Masks Predatory Abuses
Below is a statement sent to me late last week by Aidan Peters, who worked as an admissions representative from 2016 to 2020 for Colorado Technical University (CTU), a large online school owned by Illinois-based Perdoceo, one of the biggest companies in the for-profit college industry. In recent years, Perdoceo has settled major law enforcement
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McDonald’s Steers Employees To Troubled For-Profit College
Since 2014, McDonald’s and Colorado Technical University have had a partnership that involves the hamburger giant steering its employees to the online school, where they can pursue degrees in fields ranging from business to health care to information technology. The web page of McDonald’s Archways to Opportunities program announces “100% TUITION COVERED” at CTU, and
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Verdict Against Zovio Adds to Peril for Arizona Global Campus
A California court’s $22.4 million judgment last week against for-profit college operation Zovio, for years of deceptions against students at its Ashford University, creates more peril for the University of Arizona, which bought the online school from Zovio in 2020 and renamed it University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC). Following a trial where the California
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Grade Accreditors on Their Handling of College Abuses
Below are comments I presented at today’s meeting of NACIQI, the Department of Education’s advisory committee on educational quality. Thanks for the work you’re doing here. At last summer’s meeting you debated how much you should be looking at the conduct of particular schools in your evaluation of accreditors. When the Department approves an accreditor,
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Arizona Nursing Board Accuses For-Profit Aspen University of “Unprofessional Conduct”
The Arizona State Board of Nursing on Friday charged for-profit Aspen University with “unprofessional conduct,” a development that leaves the school’s some 700 Arizona-based nursing students with uncertain futures. In a 15-page complaint, the board cited evidence, based on student complaints and its own investigation, of low nursing license exam scores, rapid admissions growth, decrease
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NYC For-Profit College With Troubling Owner is Running Troubling Subway Ads
ASA College, a for-profit school with campuses in New York City and Miami, has been in the news lately because its owner, Alex Shchegol, who was forced out as the college president by his board three years ago amid allegations of egregious sexual misconduct, ousted most of the school’s board members last fall and regained
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