Donald Trump’s transparent contempt and disinterest for the lives and futures of ordinary Americans and their families was probably best demonstrated in his selection of Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. DeVos, a billionaire who inherited all of her money, with no educational or teaching experience and a disastrous track record in her efforts to privatize public education in Michigan, was, like nearly all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, the worst possible human being that could be placed in the position of presiding over this country’s public schools and institutions.
Fairly reviled by people responsible for actually teaching our children, DeVos’ appointment has provoked a heated backlash and walkouts in response to her public appearances among both school students and faculty alike. The reason is simple—this person has the power to critically damage our children with her misguided and loopy policies. As with all of Trump’s appointees, DeVos is a fanatic, but one in an even better position than most to instantaneously destroy entire futures with her whims and actions.
And true to form, one of DeVos’ first official acts will be to allow predatory “for-profit” colleges to resume churning worthless degree programs and “employment certificates” to those students who either cannot afford the skyrocketing tuitions of real accredited colleges or due to family circumstances cannot afford to move long distances to better schools. Unlike most normal “colleges,” these institutions (Trump “University” was a prime example) specifically and aggressively bill and market themselves as sure-fire paths to employment, but the jobs that are waiting for graduates of their programs are usually dismal and low-paying, many of which wouldn’t require a degree in the first place. Meanwhile, the hopeful students who have bought into their promises are often left drowning in debt.
The Obama Administration put a halt to these programs, which it recognized were little more than scams. Of course, DeVos has immediately moved to bring them all back:
In June, the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, announced plans to dismantle a set of Obama-era policies devised to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges.
Yet data released in the final days of the previous administration shows that the existing rules have proved more effective at shutting down bad college programs than even the most optimistic backers could have hoped.
The Obama Rules were designed to permanently shut down these expensive, rip-off diploma mills—and proved to be remarkably effective. The Rules (called the “gainful employment” test) looked at how much students were being asked to borrow to afford these places, versus how much they were actually getting paid by employers when they got out with their so-called “degrees.” If the ratio was ridiculously skewed then the institution was shut down as a scam mill:
If the ratio is too high — if students borrow lots of money and can’t get well-paying jobs — the program is deemed “failing.” A program that fails in two out of three years becomes ineligible for federal financial aid. Since many for-profit programs get up to 90 percent of their revenue through the Department of Education, the penalty will almost surely shut them down.
The for-profit college industry was put under a glaring microscope recently as the corporate behemoth, ITT collapsed in 2016 after several consumer lawsuits highlighted the fact that like many of these corporate ventures, it had very little to do with education, but was primarily focused on extracting profits to its executives and shareholders. Here’s an example of one of the “schools” these Rules were designed to protect students against:
Students who earned a bachelor’s degree in fashion design at Sanford-Brown College’s now-defunct Chicago campus left school with over $45,000 in federal and institutional loans. But they earned less than $21,000 per year, before taxes, food and rent. That’s barely above the minimum wage for a family of three. Only 29 percent of students who started the program graduated on time.
As the Times article points out, even to the extent that some of these for-profit colleges were providing legitimate paths to employment for their graduates, the Obama Rules allowed them to identify failing programs and get rid of them.
These Rules were put in place in the second term Obama Administration and therefore the first lists of such “failing” institutions were only released eleven days before Trump was inaugurated. One of DeVos’ first acts was to extend the appeal time for these corporate schemes. Meanwhile, she assured them that she was going to “re-write” the rules so they could resume their scamming of students. She also refused to confirm whether she would even enforce the existing rules in the interim. So of nearly 500 institutions or schools listed as “failing” who didn’t appeal their failing status, all indications are that Ms. DeVos intends to have them up and running again as soon as possible.
A glance at the cronies DeVos relies on for advice shows why. The person she put in charge of “re-writing” these rules is Robert Eitel, a former executive at “Bridgepoint Education,” a publicly traded “for profit” college corporation. Eitel is one of the folks whose company made piles of money ripping off students with worthless degree programs. Here is Bridgepoint’s track record:
Bridgepoint Education, a publicly traded for-profit college corporation, offers an online associate degree in early education through Ashford University that costs almost $34,000 in tuition, fees and supplies, most of which students finance with debt. Fewer than half of students finish on time, and the median graduate earns less than $16,000 per year. If those results continue, the program will be cut off from aid under current rules.
In other words, DeVos has put an executive from one of those “failed” institutions in charge of re-writing the Rules that would have otherwise shut down institutions like the ones he ran. What Eitel most likely will do is rewrite the rules so his institution is no longer deemed “failing,” then quit his so-called “public service” and go back to the private sector where his corporation can continue ripping people off.
This is how Trump’s appointees go about looting the Federal government. They re-write the rules that benefit themselves, then they leave to soak up the profits. Meanwhile, American students are left holding mountains of debt and clinging to phony degrees that turn out to be worthless pieces of paper.