Starting next year, for-profit schools, including some of the nation’s biggest online colleges–like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Strayer University–will have to provide graduation rate and job placement figures to new students and applicants, the Department of Education has ordered. That’s a sample of more than a dozen reforms the government will impose on for-profit schools beginning July 1, 2011. Students will now be able to make more informed decisions, the Department says. “These new rules will help ensure that students are getting from schools what they pay for: solid preparation for a good job,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an Oct. 28 press release.

[Online programs have respect to gain among employers.]

The regulations were announced amid scrutiny of for-profit schools from the Senate Health, Labor and Pensions Committee, a damning report from the Government Accountability Office, and investigations into abuse of taxpayer funded loan money by state attorneys general. In October, for instance, Oregon’s treasurer and attorney general sued Apollo Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, claiming that the school was eager to boost profits with little regard for its students. A motion filed in federal court claims that the school “concocted a scheme to fraudulently inflate revenues and boost profitability by exploiting well-intentioned and often lower-income students, including veterans of the U.S. armed forces, who were hoping to improve their qualifications and employment prospects,” adding that “students often withdrew early or failed to complete degree programs.”

The firm dismisses the claims and plans to fight the suit. “Apollo Group takes its disclosure obligations very seriously and intends to defend this lawsuit vigorously,” company spokesman Manny Rivera said in a written statement. “Apollo Group is a leader in enhancing the student experience, expanding student protections and working to help students succeed in completing their degree programs.”

[Learn more about online education.]

Last week, the office of Florida’s attorney general also announced that it launched an investigation into the for-profit sector. These suits come on the heels of recent legal action against for-profit schools in Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. “Federal scrutiny has unearthed a whole set of questionable practices that conscientious AGs across the country start wondering ‘what’s happening in my state?’” says Christine Lindstrom, higher education program director at the nonprofit Public Interest Research Group. “It makes absolute sense that they’re looking into these programs.”

Deanne Loonin, an attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, works regularly with students–including several that enrolled online–at for-profit schools who have amassed seemingly insurmountable debt and has heard first hand of the dubious practices alleged by federal and state regulators. While she can’t mention specifics due to confidentiality agreements, she says it’s common for poorer people with limited or no Internet access at home to be persuaded to sign up for an online programs, hoping to rely on libraries to complete their coursework. Once they realize they can’t fulfill the time requirements because of their limited access or that the material is simply too advanced for them, they complain to the school or try to pull out altogether. She claims they’re typically met with limited feedback–almost all of which is intended to keep them enrolled in online programs as they amass more loan debt. “They’re told, ‘don’t worry about it. We’ll figure things out,’” she says. “It’s hard to beat all of these problems, even for people who recognize there’s a problem.”

[Learn more before you enroll in an online program.]

Though the new Department of Education regulations have been put in place to help prevent just what Loonin describes, a more significant battle looms on the horizon. Regulations, which will be based on data, will judge an institution’s ability to prepare students for jobs comparable to the cost of their education, have yet to be finalized. They will target so-called “workforce programs” which include for-profit schools, community colleges, and some state universities. If schools’ students are unable to meet adequate loan debt, loan repayment, and career earnings thresholds, the institutions could be denied federal funding, which supplies a vast majority of revenue at most for-profit online programs. The rules are intended to weed out schools that don’t prepare students for their working lives, which, in theory, would benefit students and perhaps shut the doors of several institutions not up to par. Given the severity of the regulatory threat, the industry is expected to put up a fight, experts say.

Rivera, of Apollo, refuses to speak for the sector regarding the potential for a lawsuit, but Lindstrom at PIRG believes litigation will be inevitable–possibly on the grounds that the new rules unfairly discriminate against the already much-maligned sector. “We absolutely anticipate that as soon as the final rules come out the Department of Education will be met with a lawsuit,” Lindstrom says. “The sector will sue.”

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Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

Online Universities: Government Cracks Down on For-Profit Schools (U.S. News & World Report)

It is 8:30 a.m. at De La Salle Academy, a private school in Manhattan for academically talented poor children, and classical music is humming through a boom box that harks back to the 1980s.

Children are streaming up four flights of stairs and surrounding the school’s founder and principal, Brother Brian Carty, like moths fluttering around a light. They want to tell him something. They want one of his bearhugs. They want to be in his orbit for a few minutes.

If the students’ attraction to Brother Carty suggests that he is a teddy bear of an administrator, consider a few of his rules. Gossip is an expellable offense. Makeup — even lip gloss — is prohibited. Dating is outlawed.

Parents are instructed on rules regarding parties and cellphone and Internet use. Teaching fads are generally dismissed, memorization is encouraged and smart boards are nowhere to be seen. “I’m not going to spoon-feed them,” he said. “Taking notes is a skill.”

At a time when everything about education seems to be in flux — the role of testing, the expectations for teachers, the impact of technology — Brother Carty is something of a throwback. For more than a quarter-century, he has been the guiding force and gatekeeper of one of the city’s most selective, if not most heralded, private schools. More than half of its students come from families with incomes of less than $35,000, and most move on to the city’s top private high schools or elite boarding schools in New England.

De La Salle, a middle school on West 97th Street, is nonsectarian, but there is a faith component, including prayers at the beginning of the day and the start of each class. “I ask the parents to raise them in their faith and to practice it,” Brother Carty said. And though he holds an administrative role, he clearly views his position pastorally.

“I was not so sure you had the soul to make it here,” Brother Carty wrote in the autograph book of a student who graduated from De La Salle in May, Cassandra Raimundi. She said she was into boys and into gossip when she arrived at the school.

“Brother Brian had me sit in his office, and we had a long conversation and it was very emotional,” she said. “But that was the minute I decided to grow up.”

His tough-as-nails attitude toward behavior that falls short of expectations — at a funeral for a student who drowned over the summer, he told some of the student’s friends that they risked a spiritual death — does not easily fit the image of a man who has more than 1,300 friends on Facebook, and whom children flock to hug.

A towering figure, at 6-foot-4, with a deep belly laugh, he considers it his mission to be deeply involved in their lives. He chooses all of the students who are accepted, helps guide eighth graders through the high school admissions process and even consults with them four years later when they are applying to college. He seems to know everything about every one, about 150 each year, of his students, like whose father lost his job or whose mother is ill, and he still keeps up with students he had as early as the 1970s.

He has set up volunteer counseling with social workers and psychologists to help students work through problems at home. “It’s O.K. to struggle, but they have to learn to cope,” he said. “Pity parties are not allowed here.”

His graduates win scholarships to some of the city’s most prestigious schools that are eager to increase minority enrollment, including Dalton, Trinity and Fieldston, as well as boarding schools like Hotchkiss and Taft. (Brother Carty takes parents on a field trip to visit boarding schools since many of the parents, he said, have no idea what the schools are.)

“He remembers every kid, details about their families and the areas where they need to grow,” said Stephen M. Clement, headmaster of the Browning School, which has taken many of Brother Carty’s students.

Dorothy A. Hutcheson, head of the Nightingale-Bamford School, an all-girls school in Manhattan, said De La Salle alumnae come academically prepared and with a thirst for learning that stands out. “It’s a great way to get diversity without having to work for it because they come so prepared,” she said.

Brother Carty, 66, grew up on the Upper West Side, the son of Irish immigrants. His father, a steamfitter, died when Brother Carty, the middle child of three, was 9, and he took on more family responsibilities.

He attended parochial schools, taught by the De La Salle Christian Brothers in the Lasallian tradition, named after a French Roman Catholic saint who founded a system of Christian schooling for the poor in the 17th century. “I had fabulous teachers,” Brother Carty said. “They were good men.”

He started teaching in 1965 at the Monsignor Kelly School, a private school whose enrollment was made up of academically talented children from public schools that could not focus on them.

“I was suddenly in a group — they seemed like old guys; they were probably in their mid- to late-20s — of adult males who took you under their wing and nurtured you spiritually, academically and athletically,” said Michael Franc, vice president of government relations for the Heritage Foundation in Washington, and a 1971 graduate of Monsignor Kelly. “It was an across-the-board adoption in a positive way.”

Tough as Nails, but Always Ready for a Bearhug

Federal investigators are in the process of visiting all of Christina’s schools and have requested detailed discipline data for at least the last two academic years.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan first mentioned districts were being investigated at a conference in late September hosted by the Department of Education’s civil rights office and the Department of Justice’s civil rights division. Besides Delaware, the school districts under review are in New York, North Carolina, Utah and Minnesota.

One of the other districts, the San Juan School District in rural Utah, is being investigated for alleged gender disparities without respect to race or ethnicity, according to a school official.

Christina district officials acknowledged that a disparity exists in the discipline rates for black male students that they are working to correct, according to district spokeswoman Wendy Lapham. She added that the district has been cooperating with the federal investigation.

Statewide, black students made up about 32% of the public school population last year, but they accounted for about 55% of students who were suspended or expelled, according to an analysis by The News Journal published in June that compared discipline statistics provided by the state to school enrollments.

The discipline rates for all students in Delaware are higher than the national average: 21,690 of the state’s 126,801 students — about one in six — were suspended or expelled in the 2009-2010 school year, which is down slightly from the year before. Those numbers include in-school suspensions. Counting only expulsions and out-of-school suspensions, the number dips to 14,368 students, or about one in nine.

The Christina School District had the highest rate among the state’s 19 school districts in the 2008-2009 and the 2007-2008 school years. However, the district’s numbers went down in almost every school in 2009-2010.

Lapham said the decrease is the result of an effort to better train teachers, help students learn to deal with conflicts and the elimination of a zero-tolerance policy.

She said the district has been analyzing its data internally and has been “working to address any issues of disparity by working with teachers at the classroom level, increasing training for para-professionals, reviewing and discussing data at the school level and significantly reducing suspensions and expulsions.”

In 2009, a 6-year-old boy brought a Boy Scout tool to a Christina school to eat his pudding at lunch. Under the district’s zero-tolerance policy, the boy faced a punishment of suspension or expulsion. The policy did not allow educators to make a punishment judgment call based on the context of the incident or age of the child.

But after public outcry and widespread media attention, the school board decided to amend its policy as it pertained to kindergarten and first-grade students.

Parents and officials point to that outcome when they complained about Christina’s high rate of punishment among black males. The 6-year-old was white.

Wanda Stanley said she read about the boy’s case with interest because her 11-year-old daughter was expelled after a box cutter fell out of her jacket pocket at Pulaski Elementary School in Wilmington. The girl did not know how the box cutter got in her pocket and had no intention of hurting anyone, her mother said. Police were notified by the school but did not file charges.

School officials told her there was no room for debate about the expulsion because of the district’s zero-tolerance policy, Stanley said. From her perspective, Stanley saw that a white boy went unpunished while her black daughter was put out of school.

“I am hurt because I know my daughter is totally innocent and I don’t want this to follow my daughter through her schooling,” Stanley said.

The district and state boards of education ruled that the expulsion was justified. The district’s board amended the zero-tolerance policy further last school year.

A complaint against the school board is pending before the state Human Relations Commission, alleging that the district discriminated against Stanley’s daughter on the basis of age and race.

Studies show that minorities are punished at higher rates than their peers, but there’s not evidence that these children misbehave more, said Dan Losen, a former teacher who now works for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles. The government under President George W. Bush did not investigate many schools for these issues, which are now getting attention under the Obama administration, he said.

Typically, reviews from the office of civil rights are used to help districts find solutions and to monitor progress, Losen said, because “the preference has historically been to enter into a joint problem-solving approach rather than issuing violations.”

Helen Spacht, principal at Christina’s Wilson Elementary, said programs like the district’s Day of Caring help reinforce the importance of kindness and how to treat others with respect. The school is certified under the Anti-Defamation League‘s No Place for Hate program, which means staff and students have undergone training on diversity issues. Also, teachers have been meeting to share ideas and literature on better classroom and bullying management, she said.

“It’s really changing the strategies and how they work with students,” she said.

But the district has not made enough progress in dealing with these issues, said New Castle Councilman Jea Street, who organized a rally in April to protest the discipline rates.

“The fact is that (the office of civil rights) is once again going to have to do what local officials refuse to do,” Street said. “Nobody would listen to me when I claimed Christina was discriminating when it changed policy to accommodate one child and knew full well that the same policy had been used overzealously for others.”

Discipline rate of black students in Del., elsewhere is probed

Discipline rate of black students in Del., elsewhere is probed

When New York State made its standardized English and math tests tougher to pass this year, causing proficiency rates to plummet, it said it was relying on a new analysis showing that the tests had become too easy and that score inflation was rampant.

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Randi Weingarten, second from left, president of the teachersâ?? union; Chancellor Joel I. Klein, center; and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg at a news conference in 2009 discussing improved math results.

On New York School Tests, Warning Signs Ignored

In a report released Monday, a marketing firm working for the Coalition for Educational Success, an advocacy group for several privately held for-profit companies, argues that community colleges engage in “unsavory recruitment practices” and offer students “poorer-than-expected academic quality, course availability, class scheduling, job placement and personal attention.”

The report crystallizes arguments from the for-profit sector that community colleges — perceived as the Obama administration’s preferred set of institutions to offer work force training — are ill-equipped to serve the students they already enroll and would struggle in taking on larger enrollments. The document’s release just ahead of today’s summit is intended to tarnish the event’s luster and the praise for community colleges that will come from President Obama and others, and it emerges amid the for-profit sector’s aggressive lobbying, advertising and rallying against the U.S. Department of Education‘s proposed regulations on “gainful employment” and a Senate panel’s investigation of the sector.

“Community colleges play a vital role in the American economy,” said Jean Norris, managing partner of Norton Norris, the firm that produced the report. “However, they are not the only choice. Community colleges have some systemic issues that really need to be addressed and the singular focus on the problems of the career colleges is a waste of time and money and forgets the institutions that serve a much larger number of students.”

For one part of the report, Norton Norris sent “secret shoppers” to meet with admissions officers at 15 community colleges and found that none would provide graduation rates, even when asked. In the report, these findings are likened to those identified by the Government Accountability Office on undercover visits to for-profit colleges, where investigators were told they didn’t have to repay loans and encouraged to lie on financial aid forms. The firm also surveyed current for-profit college students who had been enrolled at community colleges, asking them to compare their satisfaction levels at the two different kinds of institution. In all but one category — price — the for-profit colleges came out on top.

David S. Baime, senior vice president of government relations and research at the American Association of Community College, characterized the report as “garbage” and said it was yet another attempt by the for-profit sector to fight scrutiny from the Obama administration and those on Capitol Hill. “It probably makes sense as a sort of PR strategy to try to run us down and sort of boost themselves,” he said.

Norris insisted that it was not her aim to attack community colleges, but rather to “highlight issues beyond the career college sector that are the same ones the career college sector is being attacked for.”

At last week’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing questioning for-profit colleges’ student outcomes and student debt, Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) accused the committee’s chair, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), of examining the sector without looking at how it fits into the broader landscape of U.S. colleges and universities. “I agree there is clearly a problem in higher education — now you’ll notice I didn’t limit that comment to for-profit schools,” Enzi said. “It’s na?ve to think these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector. We’ve been looking at this in a vacuum.”

While researchers said that some of the report’s findings could be accurate, the study itself is of questionable value.

“We can’t call this research,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “The for-profits are under attack and this report is being paid for by for-profits. We need to be asking many of these questions, but a report like this one isn’t providing meaningful answers.”

In the report’s introduction, Norton Norris concedes a string of flaws with the report. The sample surveyed for the study “was one of convenience and may not represent all student experiences,” the report said. The students given a chance to respond to the survey were ones who withdrew or graduated from a nonprofit college before enrolling at a for-profit, admittedly meaning that “bias may be present” among respondents. The response rate was 10%. And the survey was “custom-designed and thereby not previously proven valid and reliable.”

Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University‘s Teachers College, said he saw the report as “a tactic” for for-profit institutions in their battle against greater regulation. “Certainly from [for-profit colleges'] perspective it would be reasonable to try to put out an argument that says there are many problems with community colleges.”

Nonetheless, Bailey said, some of its findings are true. “Community colleges have low resources, the counselor-to-student ratio is extremely low. It’s not surprising that students are not very well-informed about their options at community colleges. But, again, I don’t think we can look at this as a reliable document.”

For-profit college report takes aim at community colleges

For-profit college report takes aim at community colleges

Under the agreement, Boston Public Schools agreed to assess the English proficiency of an estimated 7,000 students who were not previously tested in how well they understand, speak, read and write English. The district also agreed to provide the students with extra English language help during other classes including math, social studies and science.

In addition, the Boston Public Schools must monitor the academic performance of current and former English language learners and provide English language learner services at all schools.

The Boston Globe, citing documents obtained under a public records request, reported in July that the federal scrutiny began after Boston schools revealed during a routine state review that 42% of the district’s nearly 11,000 English language learners were not receiving the legally required help.

In a statement Friday, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the federal Department of Education‘s Office for Civil Rights said that since 2003, Boston Public Schools had failed to properly identify and adequately serve thousands of English language learners under federal law.

Officials said the settlement came after federal authorities examined the district’s policies and visited schools.

“All students who are not proficient in English are entitled to language acquisition services to overcome language barriers that impede their equal and meaningful participation in educational programs,” said Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.

For months now, Boston schools have made changes in anticipation of settlement agreement.

“This agreement outlines the work that is already underway in Boston for students learning English,” Boston Public Schools Superintendent Carol Johnson said in a statement Friday. “Within the last two years we have made significant investments for ELL students and their families that will ensure they are receiving a quality education in any school they choose in Boston.”

English learning probe settled by feds, Boston schools

English learning probe settled by feds, Boston schools

The probe was launched by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education. It’s the most recent of several federal investigations aimed at Arizona, which has been in the spotlight for its law targeting illegal immigrants, Senate Bill 1070.

“It may be that the Senate Bill 1070 issue is causing some sort of campaign, I don’t know, by the federal government against Arizona,” State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne told The Arizona Republic.

The state Department of Education for years has been monitoring the fluency of teachers who instruct English learners. In April, the education department began instructing districts to fire teachers who weren’t proficient in English.

Federal officials disclosed the investigation in a letter to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Horne said.

Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa in Washington, D.C. declined comment to The Associated Press on Wednesday. The U.S. Department of Education did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Horne predicted the federal agencies will conclude the state has done nothing wrong.

“I’m sure they’re going to find everything is fine,” Horne said. “Teachers who are teaching English need to be fluent in English, and if kids can understand what they’re saying, it’s not an issue.”

The state Department of Education has pushed a get-tough attitude on teachers who lack basic English skills or whose grammar is considered so poor that it could detract from a child’s ability to learn.

Critics say the policy could eliminate talented teachers who have a positive influence on students struggling to learn English. Some believe the Arizona Department of Education singled out Latino teachers when it audited classes taught by bilingual teachers, criticizing them for pronunciation, grammar and not speaking English well.

Arizona education chief: Feds looking at claims of English bias

Arizona education chief: Feds looking at claims of English bias

Forget chess club. College students today are attracted to clubs with activities that are more innovative — maybe even downright wacky.

College experts say students who participate in extracurricular activities are more engaged in the college experience, and benefits can be seen both in and outside the classroom.

Students who participate in co-curricular activities study more, have higher GPAs and are more satisfied with their social lives, says Kevin Kruger of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators.

The average student participates in two campus activities, according to a 2009 NASPA report, which surveyed more than 14,000 students from 35 U.S. colleges and universities. Students who attend smaller colleges tend to become involved in more organizations, the report says.

Joining clubs is one of many ways students network and develop lasting friendships, says John Gardner, president of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education and author of Your College Experience: Strategies for Success.

Students interact, learn more

David Bebeau, 20, founded the Humans vs. Zombies club at the University of Wisconsin in 2009. Bebeau describes Humans vs. Zombies, which has become popular on campuses across the country, as a “massive game of tag.” Players are split into two groups; humans who are tagged by zombies become zombies themselves, and the game ends when the last human is tagged.

As many as 300 students play the week-long game that goes on 24/7. Bebeau says the club brings together a diverse group of students who wouldn’t otherwise interact.

“We get athletes with the hardest of the hard-core nerds, and people who would never actually play together have become very good friends,” he says.

Though the main purpose of some clubs is just to have fun, others extend the learning experience. At the Culinary Institute of America, students may sit in a wine class for several hours a day and then attend a wine-tasting sponsored by the Bacchus Wine Society later that night, says David Whalen, associate dean for student activities, recreation and athletics. “They’re back there lining up at the door because they want to learn more about wine.”

Students also flock to cooking demonstrations by the Avant-Garde Cuisine Society, which has taught aspiring chefs how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen.

Students who had a handful of clubs at their high school are often overwhelmed by the hundreds of organizations they can join once they step onto large campuses. Officials have different views on whether they should dive in right away or wait a few weeks until they’ve adjusted to their new courses and environment.

The answer depends on the student, says Tina Samuel Powellson, associate director in the Office of Student Involvement at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, which offers about 345 student organizations. She says there is no “cookie-cutter” plan — “I would encourage students to take their time, to get to know what’s the best fit for them,” she says.

In the NASPA survey, 65% of students said participating in campus activities helps them learn to balance their social and academic lives; 14% said their commitment to clubs caused their grades to drop, but 25% said their grades increased.

Gardner says it’s good for students to “jump in” and join clubs right away because clubs can make a large campus feel smaller, and students can immediately make friends.

“Friendship formation is task No. 1 for most students,” he says. “If you don’t make friends, you’re lonely, you’re anxious, you feel sort of adrift.”

But he adds that students should be careful not to join too many organizations at once, so they’re not distracted from other activities such as studying and going to class.

“It’s a question of balance and not overdoing it,” he says.

R?sum?-building

While some campuses boast hundreds of clubs — the University of Michigan has more than 1,200 — students attending smaller schools don’t lack opportunities to get involved.

Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina sponsors about 40 student organizations. Because it’s a two-year college with about 9,000 full-time students, clubs experience a high turnover. This can present a challenge for less popular clubs, says Chris Libert, student activities coordinator. “Most likely, the club advisers are here, but the participants might not be,” he says.

But Libert says it’s important for students to partake in activities — even at community colleges — if they want their r?sum?s to stand out. Employers look for “well-rounded people” and students who did more than one activity, he says.

Even if clubs like the University of Minnesota’s Campus People Watchers or Princeton University’s Muggle Quidditch Team (based on the Harry Potter stories) seem to have no apparent benefit, college experts say they provide a way for students with similar interests to “connect” and “engender creativity.” They also offer an alternative to the party scene.

“They’re a very healthy form of stress relief,” Gardner says. “It’s better to spend time in this kind of group, rather than drink excessively.”

Even bizarre college clubs get students more engaged

Even bizarre college clubs get students more engaged

When Emily Cooper headed off to first grade in Moody, Ala., last week, she was prepared with all the stuff on her elementary school’s must-bring list: two double rolls of paper towels, three packages of Clorox wipes, three boxes of baby wipes, two boxes of garbage bags, liquid soap, Kleenex and Ziplocs.

Budgets Tight, School Supply Lists Go Beyond Glue Sticks

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The federal government will hire more investigators to prevent fraud by for-profit colleges in such areas as student financial aid, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on Friday.

In a letter to the chairman of a Senate committee on education, Duncan said his department will hire over 60 additional staff to strengthen oversight of schools and increase program reviews of post-secondary institutions by 50 percent each year.

Duncan said his department would conduct undercover investigations of school recruiting practices and is working to improve its anti-fraud data analysis.

The department will also hire a new Chief Customer Experience Officer to oversee consumer protection in its Federal Student Aid division and has asked for additional funding for oversight in its 2011 budget request.

Stocks of for-profit education companies, including bellwether Apollo Group Inc, DeVry Inc and Career Education Corp fell on Friday. The S&P education services index was down almost 5 percent.

The letter followed a hearing by the Senate committee last week where the Government Accountability Office presented its findings from an undercover investigation of for-profit college recruiting activities.

“The unethical and potentially illegal practices uncovered by GAO are unacceptable,” Duncan wrote in the letter.

Duncan said the department is investigating the findings of the investigation and may demand schools return improperly obtained funds.

The beefed-up enforcement measures are in addition to rules the department has proposed to provide prospective students more data about schools, including student loan repayment rates. The department will release loan repayment rates for individual schools later Friday.

(Editing by Kenneth Barry)

Education department to boost anti-fraud efforts (Reuters)

Education department to boost anti-fraud efforts (Reuters)