Steve Gunderson, the former congressman (R-WI) who is the chief lobbyist for America’s for-profit colleges, warns in a new email, “There has never been a time when the economic, regulatory and political assaults on our sector have been stronger.” Gunderson, since 2012 the CEO of the discredited, depleted for-profit college trade group CECU (formerly APSCU),
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Steve Gunderson, the former congressman (R-WI), who heads the discredited, depleted for-profit college trade group CECU (formerly APSCU), is working hard to defeat a new Obama Administration rule that would (1) provide debt relief for students who were defrauded by their schools and (2) take steps to hold fraudulent schools accountable.  In addition to efforts
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The for-profit college industry clearly is spending heavily to try to convince non-profit and public colleges to oppose new Department of Education regulations imposing accountability on badly-performing schools. Last week I wrote about how the industry has hired a former long-time New York Times reporter to try to argue to traditional higher education groups that
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Twenty years ago this summer, he stood on a San Diego stage and accepted the nomination of the Republican Party for President of the United States. Last week, Bob Dole, now a retired U.S. senator from Kansas and an endorser of Donald Trump for president, registered as a lobbyist for Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit college
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Republican congressman Mike Pompeo of Kansas, who represents Wichita, seems to be doing the bidding of the Koch Brothers once again: He has introduced legislation to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing or enforcing a rule to improve the safety of America’s most dangerous chemical plants. Wichita is the home of Koch Industries, which has
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For-profit colleges are once again fighting furiously, and expensively, to gut a common sense regulation from the Obama Department of Education. The Hill today is calling this latest lobbying battle a “frenzy.” The Obama rule spurring this frenzy would: 1. Implement a law already on the books by providing standards and procedures for the government to forgive the
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In a world of mass shootings, Brexit, and a looming dramatic presidential election, the deliberations of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), in a nondescript meeting room at the DoubleTree Crystal City in Arlington, VA,  would hardly seem to matter. But, yesterday, it did matter. By the scheduled 8:30 am
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    Today Republic Report is releasing a brand-new investigative report: Friends In High Places: Who Endorses America’s Troubled For-Profit Colleges?  Our report describes in detail the network of prominent Americans — lawyers, lobbyists, board members, university presidents, politicians, celebrities, and others — who continue to lend their credibility and talents to defending or promoting seven of
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