Century Foundation Fellow Comments on For-Profit Colleges Applying for Nonprofit Status
The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday denied a request by a Utah-based for-profit college chain to convert to nonprofit status for federal financial aid purposes.
The decision means the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which operates four colleges in six states as well as an online degree program, will have to continue to meet financial aid and accountability rules targeted at for-profits.
Bob Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation who has written extensively on evidence of for-profits looking to skirt regulatory frameworks (and who as an Education Department official early in the Obama administration engineered a crackdown on for-profit colleges), said the department’s decision on the application should put an end to colleges’ attempts to dodge oversight by converting to nonprofit status...