Trump's DOD Failed to Protect Servicemembers from Bad Actor Colleges, But We Demand More Evidence

The Higher Education Inquirer has been waiting since December 2017 for information from the US Department of Defense (DOD) about decades of predatory behavior by subprime colleges against military servicemembers, a disturbing pattern reduced by the Obama Administration and made worse again by the Trump Administration. We are still waiting for information, nearly seven years later and through multiple efforts, as Donald Trump runs again for President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. And today, with yet another delay, DOD says they won't have the response until after the election.   

In 2012, the Obama Administration, through Executive Order 13607, established policies for increased oversight of schools that received DOD Tuition Assistance (TA) funds. DOD TA is a program that pays schools for servicemembers going through college. For several decades before Obama was the President, subprime schools systematically exploited servicemembers, veterans, and their families, collaborating formally and informally with military officials and educators. They even held conferences at the national and state level through the Council of College and Military Educators (CCME). 

 

As part of Obama era reform, DOD Voluntary Education and their contractor (PwC and later Gatehouse) were to select for review 200 schools at random and 50 schools that were the worst performing. The worst actors could be sanctioned. But it never happened.

In 2017, the Trump Administration began rolling back these protective measures and decided not to provide information to the media to avoid "a witch hunt."  This action shielded bad actor schools from public scrutiny and sanctions that the schools could receive for abusing servicemembers. 

In December 2017, we contacted a DOD VOL ED official who refused to answer us. But based on other bits of information, including data from the Department of Veterans Affairs, we believe we know many of these bad actor schools. Some of those schools, like the politically connected University of Phoenix, would be obvious to those who follow bad actors in higher education. But we wanted the DOD to publicly name them. That DOD official is now working as a special advisor to the Department of Education Federal Student Aid.  Our intent was not to target that official, but to get to the bottom of the problem, which we believe to be at a higher level of management, and possibly to then-President Trump. 

In May 2019, we filed a Freedom of Information request (DOD OIG-2019-000702) asking for a list of the 50 worst actor schools for 2017 and 2018. DOD denied that such a list existed despite evidence to the contrary.  We filed another FOIA request in 2021, 21-F-0411 and even with more information that we provided, they denied that such a list existed. 

Our last attempt for information, DOD FOIA 22-1203-F, was filed in July 2022 to obtain communications between the high-level DOD Voluntary Education official and others.  DOD has given us a number of excuses for the delays, and we have modified the request to limit the search.  In the meantime, we have contacted politicians and national media to help us with what's been going on. So far, nearly seven years later, no one has acted, as servicemembers continue to be ripped off by predatory subprime colleges. 

Related links: 

DoD review: 0% of schools following TA rules (Military Times, 2018)

Schools are struggling to meet TA rules, but DoD isn’t punishing them. Here’s why. (Military Times, 2019)

Wealth and Want Part 4: Robocolleges and Roboworkers

The rise of online-only education has been a double-edged sword. While it has expanded access to higher education, it has also introduced a new breed of institutions (robocolleges), students (robostudents), and workers (roboworkers). These accredited online universities are for-profit, non-profit, secular, and Christian, but the all share similar characteristics. 

Robocolleges prioritize profit over pedagogy, churning out ambitious and busy working-class professionals in fields like education, medicine, and business--and hundreds of billions of dollars in student loan debt. These schools include Southern New Hampshire University, Grand Canyon University, Liberty University Online, University of Maryland Global, University of Phoenix, Purdue University Global, University of Arizona Global Campus, Walden University, Capella University, and Colorado Tech.  A list of America's largest robocolleges is here.

The Robocollege Model

Robocolleges are characterized by their reliance on technology to deliver education at scale. They often employ automated systems for course content delivery, student assessment, and even faculty interaction. While this can reduce costs, it can also lead to a dehumanized and impersonal learning experience.

• Aggressive Marketing and Recruitment: Robocolleges often employ aggressive marketing tactics to attract students, including misleading advertisements and high-pressure sales techniques. These tactics can lead students to make hasty decisions without fully considering the financial implications of their enrollment.
• High Tuition Costs: Robocolleges typically charge significantly higher tuition rates compared to public and nonprofit institutions. This is often justified by claims of providing a superior education or specialized programs, but the quality of education may not always align with the cost.
• Lack of Faculty Interaction: Many robocolleges rely heavily on pre-recorded lectures and automated feedback systems. This can deprive students of the valuable mentorship and guidance that comes from interacting with experienced faculty.
• Shallow Curriculum: To maximize enrollment and revenue, robocolleges may offer overly broad or superficial curricula. This can result in graduates who lack the depth of knowledge and critical thinking skills required for professional success.
• Focus on Quantity Over Quality: Robocolleges often prioritize churning out graduates rather than ensuring their academic excellence. This can lead to a decline in standards and a dilution of the value of their degrees.
• Limited Academic Support: Robocolleges may have fewer resources and support services compared to traditional institutions, which can make it difficult for students to succeed academically. This can result in increased dropout rates and prolonged time to graduation, leading to higher overall costs.
• Poor Job Placement Rates: Graduates of robocolleges may struggle to find employment in their chosen fields or secure jobs that pay enough to justify the high cost of their education. This can make it challenging to repay student loans, especially if the loans are based on the expected earning potential of the degree.

The Impact on Professional Fields

• Education: Substandard educators can harm students' learning outcomes and contribute to a cycle of educational inequality.
• Medicine: Substandard medical professionals can pose a serious risk to patient safety and health. 
• Business: Graduates from robocolleges may lack the practical skills and business acumen needed to succeed in the competitive job market. 
• Government: Graduates may lack essential interpersonal skills like communication, negotiation, conflict resolution, and team building.  
  
  

 

Consequences of Student Debt on Roboworkers:

• Delayed Major Life Milestones: Student debt can delay major life milestones such as buying a home, starting a family, or pursuing further education.
• Financial Stress and Anxiety: The burden of student debt can lead to significant financial stress and anxiety, impacting overall well-being.
• Limited Economic Mobility: High levels of student debt can limit economic mobility, making it difficult for individuals to achieve their financial goals and improve their standard of living.
  

Addressing the Problem

To address the issue of substandard professionals produced by robocolleges, several measures can be taken:

• Increased Oversight: Regulatory bodies should strengthen oversight of online institutions to ensure they meet minimum quality standards.
• Transparency: Robocolleges should be required to disclose their faculty qualifications, course delivery methods, and student outcomes.
• Accreditation Reform: Accreditation standards should be updated to reflect the unique challenges and opportunities of online education.
• Consumer Awareness: Students should be made aware of the potential risks of enrolling in robocolleges and encouraged to research institutions carefully.

While online education can be a valuable tool, it is essential to hold institutions accountable for the quality of education they provide. By addressing the shortcomings of robocolleges, we can ensure that online learning continues to be a force for positive change in higher education.

Related links:

Robocollege Update (2024)

Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education (2023)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins, 2023)

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs (2021)

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents" (2019)

The Higher Education Assembly Line (2019)

Higher Education, Technology, and A Growing Social Anxiety

The Era We Are In

We are living in a neoliberal/libertarian era filled with technological change, emotional and behavioral change, and social change. An era resulting in alienation (disconnection/isolation) for the working class and anomie (lawlessness) among elites and those who serve them. We are simultaneously moving forward with technology and backward with human values and principles. Elites are reestablishing a more brutal world, hearkening back to previous centuries--a world the Higher Education Inquirer has been observing and documenting since 2016. No wonder folks of the working class and middle class are anxious. 

Manufactured College Mania

For years, authorities such as the New York Federal Reserve expressed the notion (or perhaps myth) that higher education was an imperative for young folks. They said that the wealth premium for college graduates was a million dollars over the course of a lifetime--ignoring the fact that a large percentage of people who started college never graduated--and that tens of millions of consumers and their families were drowning in student loan debt. 

2U, Guild Education, and a number of online robocolleges reflected the neoliberal promise of higher education and online technology to improve social mobility.  The mainstream media were largely complicit with these higher ed schemes. 

2U brought advanced degrees and certificates to the masses, using brand names such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, USC, University of North Carolina, and the University of Texas to promote the expensive credentials that did not work for many consumers. 

Guild Education brought educational opportunities to folks at Walmart, Target, Macy's and other Fortune 500 companies who would be replacing their workers with robotics, AI, and other technologies. But the educational opportunities were for credentials from subprime online schools like Purdue University Global. Few workers took the bait. 

As 2U files for bankruptcy, it leaves a number of debt holders holding the bag, including more than $500M to Wilmington Trust, and $30M to other vendors and clients, including Guild Education, and a number of elite universities. Guild Education is still alive, but like 2U, has had to fire a quarter of its workers, even downsizing its name to Guild, as investor money dries up. It continues to spend money on its image, as a Team USA sponsor.    

The online robocolleges (including Liberty University, Grand Canyon University, University of Phoenix, Purdue University Global, and University of Arizona Global)  brought adult education and hope to the masses, especially those who were underemployed. In many cases, it was false hope, as they also brought insurmountable student debt to American consumers. Billions and billions in debt that cannot be repaid, now considered toxic assets to the US government. 

Along the way there have been important detractors in popular culture, especially on the right. Conservative radio celebrity Dave Ramsey, railed against irresponsible folks carrying lots of debt, including student loan debt. He was not wrong, but he did not implicate those who preyed on student consumers. On the left, the Debt Collective also railed against student loan debt, long before the right, but they were often ignored or marginalized. 

Adapting to a Brutal System

The system  works for elites and some of those who serve them, but not for others, even some of the middle class. Good jobs once at the end of the education pipeline have been replaced by 12-hour shifts, 60 hour work weeks, bullsh*t jobs, and gig work. 

Working-class Americans are living shorter lives, lives in some cases made worse not so much by lack of education, but by the destruction of union jobs, and by social media, and other intended and unintended consequences of technology and neoliberalism. Millions of folks, working class and some middle class, who have invested in higher education and have overwhelming debt and fading job prospects, feel like they have been lied to.

We also have lives made more sedentary and solitary by technology. Lives made more hectic and less tolerable. Inequality making lives too easy for those with privilege and lives too difficult for the working class to manage. Lives managed by having fewer relationships and fewer children. Many smartly choosing not to bring children into this new world. All of this manufactured by technology and human greed.  

The College Dream is Over...for the Working Class

There are two competing messages about higher education: the first that college brings opportunity and wealth and the second, that higher education may bring debt and misery. The truth is, these different messages are meant for two groups: pushing brand name schools and student loans for the most ambitious middle class/working class and a lesser form of education for the struggling working class. 

In 2020, Gary Roth said that the college dream was over. Yet the socially manufactured college mania continues, flooding the internet with ads for college and college loans, as social realities point to a future with fewer good and meaningful jobs even for those with degrees. Higher education will continue to work for some, but should every consumer, especially among the struggling working class, believe the message is for them? 

Related links:

More than half of college grads are stuck in jobs that don't require degrees (msn.com)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins)

Edtech Meltdown 

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs

2U Declares Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Will Anyone Else Name All The Elite Universities That Were Complicit?

College Mania!: An Open Letter to the NY Fed (2019)

"Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming": The US Working-Class Depression (2020)

The College Dream is Over (Gary Roth, 2020)

University of Idaho acquisition of the University of Phoenix has become a Monty Python sketch

The University of Idaho continues to spend money on the possibility that it (or the State of Idaho) may buy the University of Phoenix from Apollo Global Management. According to Kevin Richert at Idaho Ed News, the University of Idaho has already spent $14.2 million on this purchase, with the chance of a money back guarantee--sort of.

Over the last year, University of President C. Scott Green has accepted the ridicule of Saturday Night Live and the questioning of the NY Times. In addition to investing his reputation on the deal, Green has spent thousands of his personal dollars trying to line up allies in the Idaho Legislature to help him out. But some of them have already lost their election bids. 

Phoenix has told President Green what a great buy this is for the University of Idaho, seemingly unaware that this is a school that is not well, with almost a million student debtors holding more than $21 billion in student loan debt.  

In addition, more than 73,000 University of Phoenix student loan debtors have filed for debt forgiveness, alleging the school has defrauded them--and that of that group, 19,000 are getting immediate relief from the Sweet v Cardona case--something the owner or future owner may be liable for. 

What more does President Green need to know before pulling the plug on this deal? Are there that many Idaho politicians that can be bought and sold?  We don't think so.

This sir, is a dead parrot. And for those who do not know the cultural reference...

Related links:

New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion Dollars 

ED Completes Pre-Acquisition Review for University of Phoenix Deal. University of Idaho Continues Hiding Details of Transaction Fees, 43 Education "High-Risk" Bonds.

How University of Phoenix Failed. It's a Long Story. But It's Important for the Future of Higher Education.

Fraud Claims Against University of Phoenix Continue to Mount

University of Phoenix articles 

Borrower Defense articles

New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion Dollars

The Higher Education Inquirer has just received a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) response from the US Department of Education, stating that about 971,000 current student loan debtors who have attended the University of Phoenix have accumulated an estimated $21.6B in debt. The FOIA is Department of Education FOIA 23-02912-F. These debt numbers are consistent with a previous HEI analysis. 

We have been unable to learn whether this accumulated debt includes the hundreds of millions in debt that has already been forgiven--and that its present and future owners may be liable for. In 2023, we reported that approximately 73,000 debtors from the University of Phoenix had filed borrower defense fraud claims, and that more than 19,000 cases were granted immediate relief in the Sweet v Cardona settlement.

Through another FOIA request, we also discovered 6,265 consumer complaints in the Federal Trade Commission database made after its current owners took over. In 2019, the FTC and the University of Phoenix settled a claim for $191M for deceptive employment claims. It would appear that Phoenix has not done enough to clean up its act.  

The Higher Education Inquirer has been working for more than six years to get data about the school's noncompliance with the Department of Defense Tuition Assistance (TA) program, where servicemembers have been systematically preyed upon--and where Trump officials and their surrogates worked to cover up malfeasance by subprime schools--including the University of Phoenix. We hope to report on this topic later.  

The University of Phoenix is presently owned by Apollo Global Management and Vistria Group, who have been unsuccessfully trying to sell the school for at least three years. Previous potential suitors, held to secrecy, have included Tuskegee University, UMass Global, and the University of Arkansas System. 

Apollo Global Management is currently negotiating with the State of Idaho, which would incur $685M in debt to acquire the school. State officials are wary of the deal, and those with strong principles are unlikely to approve. But it's possible that other politicians may change their minds: if they or their families are properly compensated, directly or indirectly, for taking the risks to their reputations and careers. 

Related links:

ED Completes Pre-Acquisition Review for University of Phoenix Deal. University of Idaho Continues Hiding Details of Transaction Fees, 43 Education "High-Risk" Bonds.

How University of Phoenix Failed. It's a Long Story. But It's Important for the Future of Higher Education.

Fraud Claims Against University of Phoenix Continue to Mount

University of Phoenix articles 

Borrower Defense articles

Ahead of the Learned Herd: Why the Higher Education Inquirer Grows During the Endless College Meltdown (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

The Higher Education Inquirer (HEI) continues to grow without financial support and without paying for advertising or SEO help. The reason is that HEI continues to provide useful information for folks who follow US higher education. We do it in the spirit of Upton Sinclair and others pejoratively known as the muckrakers. And we gladly take the label. 

For years, the higher ed herd dismissed warnings of looming financial crises, but HEI accurately foresaw the revenue declines and unsustainable models forcing college closures, and the downside of the online pivot (including online program managers and robocolleges). We also saw a decade of enrollment declines with no end in sight. 

HEI has published a number of articles that provide value to higher ed workers (including adjuncts), future, present, and former students (including the tens of millions of student loan debtors), and other folks affiliated with the higher ed industry (including workers at edtech and financial companies). We called it the College Meltdown. 

 

We have examined a number of groupings in the industry (from community colleges and for-profit schools to elite universities and everything in between) and issues (to include student and worker protests, student loan debt, and violence on campus).  We highlight those who are trying to good, like David Halperin (Republic Report), Gary Stocker (College Viability), Mark Salisbury (TuitionFit), Helena Worthen (Power Despite Precarity), Theresa Sweet and Tarah Gramza (Sweet v Cardona), and Ann Bowers (Debt Collective). 

HEI has also had the good fortune of getting outstanding contributions from Randall Collins, Bryan Alexander, Robert Kelchen, Phil Hill, Gary Roth, Bill Harrington, and others. Bryan Alexander's contributions have been extremely important in highlighting the existential threat of global climate change and the civil strife that accompanies it.

While honest reporting is important to us, we do take sides, just as other outlets do (most others take the side of big business and government). We are for the People, and we hunt for corruption that undermines democracy. We have examined companies (like Guild, Maximus, and EducationDynamics) that few others will bother to examine. We continue to follow subprime for-profit colleges that have morphed into subprime state universities (like Purdue Global and University of Arizona Global) and other bad actors in higher ed (like 2U and the University of Phoenix). 

We value history, the real unvarnished history, not the tales, myths and lies that have been repeated to children for generations and used as indoctrination at all levels of society. And we value those who look honestly at the present and the future, those not trying to sell themselves or their hidden agendas. 

As Howard Zinn proclaimed, you can't be neutral on a moving train. And US higher education, we fear, is a train moving away from America's hopes and dreams of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice, towards a less utopian, more dangerous, place.