Trump Team Weakens Bipartisan Law That Protects Students and Veterans From Predatory Colleges (David Halperin)

On the eve of the 4th of July holiday, when they probably hoped no one was paying attention, the Trump Department of Education issued an Interpretive Rule that will make it easier for for-profit colleges to evade regulations aimed at protecting students, and especially student veterans and military service members, from low-quality schools.

The Department’s 90-10 rule, created by Congress, requires for-profit colleges to obtain at least ten percent of their revenue from sources other than taxpayer-funded federal student grants and loans, or else — if they flunk two years in a row — lose eligibility for federal aid. The purpose is to remove from federal aid those schools of such poor quality that few students, employers, or scholarship programs would put their own money into them.

For decades, low quality schools have been able to avoid accountability through a giant loophole: only Department of Education funding counted on the federal side of the 90-10 ledger, while other government funding, including GI Bill money from the VA, and tuition assistance for active duty troops and their families from the Pentagon, counted as non-federal. That situation was particularly bad because it motivated low-quality predatory schools, worried about their 90-10 ratios, to aggressively target U.S. veterans and service members for recruitment.

After years of efforts by veterans organizations and other advocates to close the loophole, Congress in 2021 passed, on a bipartisan basis, and President Biden signed, legislation that appropriately put all federal education aid, including VA and Defense Department money, on the federal side of the ledger.

The Department was required by the new law to issue regulations specifying in detail how this realignment would work, and the Department under the Biden administration did so in 2022, after engaging in a legally-mandated negotiated rulemaking that brought together representatives of relevant stakeholders. In an unusual development, that rulemaking actually achieved consensus among the groups at the table, from veterans organizations to the for-profit schools themselves, on what the final revised 90-10 rule should be.

The new rule took effect in 2023, and when the Department released the latest 90-10 calculations, for the 2023-24 academic year, sixteen for-profit colleges had flunked, compared with just five the previous year. These were mostly smaller schools, led by West Virginia’s Martinsburg College, which got 98.73 percent of its revenue from federal taxpayer dollars, and Washington DC’s Career Technical Institute, which reported 98.68 percent. Another 36 schools, including major institutions such as DeVry University, Strayer University, and American Public University, came perilously close to the line, at 89 percent or higher.

The education department last week altered the calculation by effectively restoring an old loophole that allowed for-profit colleges to use revenue from programs that are ineligible for federal aid to count on the non-federal side. That loophole was expressly addressed, via a compromise agreement, after Department officials discussed the details with representatives of for-profit colleges, during the 2022 negotiated rulemaking meetings.

All the flunking or near-flunking schools can now get a new, potentially more favorable, calculation of their 90-10 ratio under the Trump administration’s re-interpretation of the rule.

In the lawless fashion of the Trump regime, the Department has now undermined a provision of its own regulation without going through the required negotiated rulemaking process. (The Department’s notice last week included a labored argument about why its action was lawful.)

As it has done multiple times over its first six months, the Trump Department of Education, under Secretary Linda McMahon, has again taken a step that allows poor-quality predatory for-profit colleges to rip off students and taxpayers.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]

Civil Rights Groups Sue Facebook and Instagram For Targeting Predatory College Ads at Black Users (David Halperin)

A nonprofit advocacy group sued Meta this week, contending that the tech giant’s Facebook and Instagram platforms facilitate the targeting of ads for for-profit colleges to Black users, while disproportionately steering ads for public and non-profit colleges to white users. 

The lawsuit, filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court on behalf of the non-profit Equal Rights Center (ERC), alleges that Meta thus “provides separate and unequal services to Black users in its places of public accommodations.”

In a statement, ERC’s lead lawyers, from the non-profit Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, call Meta’s practices “modern-day digital redlining.” 

Redlining refers to unlawful practices that deny or restrict financial and other services — such as consumer loans and home mortgages — to people based on their race, ethnicity, or other protected characteristic. 

ERC’s lawyers allege that Meta’s conduct violates the District of Columbia’s Human Rights Act and Consumer Protection Procedures Act.

As the lawyers note, many for-profit colleges have histories of using deceptive advertising and recruiting to draw people into high-priced, low-quality programs that leave many students worse off than when they enroll — deep in debt and without the careers they sought. As a result, ERC’s complaint argues, Black users are disadvantaged by Meta’s alleged practice of pushing them to for-profit schools and denying them communications from higher quality, more affordable schools.

For-profit schools with records of poor student outcomes have frequently been accused of targeting their marketing and recruiting at Black people.

The new complaint accuses Meta of promising to deliver users a “valuable and relevant personalized” ad experience when it has instead “[made] ad delivery decisions based on race.” 

The complaint alleges that Meta collates data that Facebook and Instagram directly collect from users with data from various apps and websites, including, on at least one occasion, reported ethnicity information from the ACT college entrance exam website, and employs the collective data to target individual users.

The complaint references a July 2024  academic paper, describing how researchers submitted to Facebook pairs of ads, one for a for-profit college and the other for a nonprofit school. They found, according the complaint, that Black Facebook and Instagram users “were more likely to get ads for the for-profit colleges, while white Facebook and Instagram users were more likely to get the ads for the public nonprofit schools.” The complaint does not identify the academic study, but the description suggests the lawyers are referencing a report from researchers at Princeton and the University of South California. 

A 2016 report by Pro Publica revealed that Facebook was permitting advertisers on its site to exclude users from their ad campaigns based on race. Facebook ultimately removed that option for advertisers, but further research suggests that Meta’s algorithms still effectively skew ads based on the race of the user.  

Damon T. Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee, the legal group that filed the case, said in a statement, “Separate and unequal services should be remnants of the past, but they are still a present-day reality for Black users on Meta’s platforms.” He added, “Digital redlining, especially in today’s higher education market, sends the unmistakable signal that Black people belong in some institutions but not others. This lawsuit aims to make it clear that no corporation—not even a Big Tech company as powerful as Meta—should be allowed to profit from the discriminatory treatment of Black students and consumers.”

Meta has not responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit.

ERC is also represented in the case by the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, and the law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP.

[Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Republic Report.]