For more than seven years, we have been waiting to obtain information
from the US Department of Defense (DOD) about schools that prey upon servicemembers using DOD Tuition Assistance to further their college aspirations. And we have done it at our peril, repeatedly taking flak from people in DC.
As the Higher Education Inquirer reported earlier, DOD and these schools have had questionable relationships with these schools going back to the 1980s, with the for-profit college takeover of CCME, the Council of College and Military Educators.
Those who follow the higher education business know the names of the bad actors, some that are still in business (like the University of Phoenix and Colorado Tech) and some that have closed (like ITT Tech and the Art Institutes). Others have morphed into arms of state universities (Kaplan University becoming Purdue University Global and Ashford University becoming University of Arizona Global).
Accountability was supposed to happen during the Obama administration (with Executive Order 13607) but those rules were not fully implemented. Under the first Trump administration, these safeguards were largely ignored, and bad actor schools faced no penalties.
Some of these scandals were reported in the
media, and have been forgotten.
On April 1, 2025 we were again supposed to receive information about these bad actor schools, and the DOD officials who were complicit. It didn't happen. That FOIA (22-1203) which was initiated in July 2022 is now scheduled for a reply on July 3, 2025, three years from the original submission.
Previous FOIAs from 2019 also came up with no information. And requests for information in 2017 from DOD officials were met with harassment from other parties.
The only thing we can be grateful for is that DOD continues to communicate with us.
Related links:
Trump's DOD Failed to Protect Servicemembers from Bad Actor Colleges, But We Demand More Evidence
DoD review: 0% of schools following TA rules (Military Times, 2018)
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