DOE Looks to Lobbyists for Accountability

Even as the Department of Education works to shut down sketchy for-profit colleges and chastises the organizations responsible for determining if a school should receive federal dollars, they want to let even more for-profits into the system. In their new experiment, the Department wants to prove that new “Quality Assurance Entities” (QAEs) can monitor schools and prevent the abuses that plague the for-profit sector. But the Department of Education has selected the American Council on Education, the main higher education lobbying organization, as a QAE. The organization that lobbies to increase federal dollars to its members is trying to prove it can regulate its own members.