There has been a lot of talk in the campaign trails on how the candidate will deal with the gigantic $1.3 trillion student loans debt.  This indicates finally this country realizes that there is something wrong with the US higher education despite some say otherwise.  Waiting until 2016 to address such important issues show:

1. For some people the student loans is not really important. It surfaces as a campaign rhetoric may be just to get student loans borrowers’ votes.
2. The regulator often adopts a reactive policy instead of proactive or even “do nothing policy”.
3. Most players in the past have pretended that the country higher education system is not broken.
4. Some players have taken advantages because the system in fact is badly broken.
5. Past administrators have lack of “will” to straight things down, and chose to quit rather than to fight all the way through.
6. The next administration needs to appoint a person-in-chief that has the bone to say what is wrong and take real actions to fix things regardless of the challenges from many sides.
7. Appoint a person-in-chief that has the integrity, courage and ability to focus on the interest of Uncle Sam’s and not others.
8. The next administration needs to be honest to the people instead to the groups of people who happen to be his or her supporters in the campaign trail.
9. A “big name school” does not always indicate or a credible signal that the person-in-chief for the job has the quality as mentioned in point 5, 6 and 7.
10. Empty promises or lies will cause more damages than good.

The remaining questions are “Can Uncle Sam find the person-in-chief with such qualities”? Or “will the next administrator be able to carry out what has been promised in the campaign trails”? Or will it be just another empty promise as any politician will do”?

Recently, we just learned that the DOE is considering to drop the ACICS from the accreditation business.  The recommendation confirmed what the Association has hypothesized many years ago about the acute problems associated with one of the quality works by the US accreditation agencies.  Though the news on ACICS comes a bit too late, it is better than never.  Applying the Waste Function Paradigm on 11 years published data, the Association has calculated the proxy of wasteful resources on other US regional accrediting agencies (note that only DOE has the exact numbers).  The calculation is based on nominal (Dollar) value and on all Carnegie classification institutions.  That said, potentially there will be a double counting.  Perhaps, it is time for the regulator to take proactive actions instead of reactive to protect the tax payers’ money, the students’ and their family precious resources from the predators.

It seems that the American society does not to have much choices when dealing with cheating conducted by selected segments in the higher education industry.  The society completely depends on the regulator’s willingness to take appropriate actions toward the lemons.  Though, it has been identified by many who they are, it takes the regulator a tremendous amount of time to deal with the problems.  The business model of some of the organizations do not gear toward helping the students, but to find ways to extract the public money which often left the students in debts which some of them have to carry the burdens for the rest of their life.  It is stunning how ignorance this country has been toward students being cheated from left and right.  Only one law maker has consistently voiced the concern and try to change the course!  Where are the rests? Making the matter worst, the accrediting agencies that supposed to keep players in the line, found to be part of the problems.  Who else should we trust?

On December 14th, 2015, the Association has written and published an article i.e., ESCC. In this article the importance of checking financial accountability was stressed. Today we again learned why such an accountability is urgently needed. One problem after another found in the industry. While the regulator tries to deal with academic accountability, and now it has to deal with another bigger problem related to the institutions’ financial integrity, fraud and cheating. Corinthian and American Career Institute, or ACI are just two cases that show the tip of the iceberg. It did not just happen only at for-profit organizations. There are many more out there. As it is currently, the regulator just do not have enough man-power to conduct the financial accountability jobs on more than 6000 organizations. The fact of the matter was that it, the regulator just started to establish a unit within its organization to conduct such efforts starting in February, 2016 after the Association again and again urged it to do so.

On April 22, 2016, Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), known before as DPC, Democratic Policy Committee wrote a letter to DOE Secretary to take more firm measures to various accrediting agencies.  We all may know the infamous case on the Corinthian College, a for-profit education institution.  When it collapsed, it was an accredited higher education institution in the US.  One may ask the question how could this thing happen?  An accredited institution went bankrupt without any prior warning from the accrediting agencies that supposedly to protect the interests of the American society?  The Association has written an article on July 03, 2015 to raise the issue.  Though a bit late, this is one of the reasons that motivates the Senate Democrats to write the letter to the DOE Secretary. We, at the Association are glad that finally the US lawmakers do something and other institution confirmed the Association’s observation on May 5th, 2016.  There are a couple things that one can learn from this case:

1. All involved parties are reactive instead of proactive.
2. Colleges’ accreditors may not have done their job optimally.
3. No consequences in place for a sub-par quality work.  Therefore, there should be an accreditor agency or agencies to conduct compliance tests on all current accrediting agencies’ work.
4. Accreditation policies, and processes and (using Mr. Gray’s words, the accrediting agencies, have they own methods and criteria) may have been out-dated and they need to be reevaluated, rewritten and to be streamlined with the American society’s concerns.

We also learned today that DOE has launched a new enforcement unit which will closely monitor financial accountability among US colleges who are benefited from the federal government funding programs in Higher Ed. This development will increase the pressures for college decision makers to ensure that both academic and financial accountability are in-check. The Association has, in the past suggested that the US needs such an accountability for making sure Pareto Optimality, or at least Pareto Improvement is achieved in the industry. Financial burdens caused by operational inefficiency will only make the country, the tax payers,the student borrowers and their family to be worse-off. Therefore, the BAU ways to conduct business in the industry are slowly, but surely dying. In contrast, the new paradigms which the Association has proposed and written in its Blog few years ago will surely be one of the best alternatives to overcome such challenges. This new ruling will not in anyway weaken the US Higher Ed, rather to make it better in the long-run.  However, Colleges have to make strategic decisions to move forward, and not backward.  Given these new developments, the Association will share its expertise to colleges who need it. Do not wait any longer, just contact us.

Today we learned that one of the leading public companies in the for-profit education industry will sell its business to a group of investors. Again, many years ago the Association has predicted that this possibility may occur, and that we learned today it has happened.  Note that if this can happen to for-profit education institutions, one can also make a parallel prediction what is going to happen to private, small, and non-state owned education institutions, unless certain strategic actions are taken.  The Association has written in its Blog many months ago that the US education industry is experiencing phenomenal structural changes.  As the regulator puts more breaks, one may see more mergers, take-overs or college closures in the future.