If it wasn't so serious this would be hilarious

DeVos Allowed Group to Accredit College with ‘No Students, No Faculty, and No Classrooms’
by Jerry Lambe

Led by Secretary Betsy DeVos, the U.S. Department of Education in 2018 revived a Washington, D.C. accrediting agency, just two years after it was shut down by President Barack Obama’s administration. Now, the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) is back to determining the viability of higher education institutions, and has reportedly approved Reagan National University, a college which doesn’t appear to exist at all.

The ACICS was shut down because it had a history of “pervasive compliance problems,” and consistently approved questionable for-profit colleges that handed out worthless degrees and left students hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt such as Corinthian Colleges, FastTrain College, ITT Tech, and Brightwood College, according to a report from USA Today and The Argus Leader.

The move to revive the troubled accrediting agency was part of the Trump administration’s larger effort to reverse Obama-era regulations to prevent abuses at for-profit colleges.

“We need to get this right for our students, and we need to get this right for our institutions of higher education,” DeVos said at the time. “Once fully implemented, the current rules would unfairly and arbitrarily limit students’ ability to pursue certain types of higher-education and career-training programs.”

The news outlet contacted seven faculty members listed on the website of Reagan National University (RNU) in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, four of whom taught at entirely different colleges and said they had never worked at RNU, while many other listed educators were “entirely absent from the internet” lacking personal websites and social media profiles. Harold Harris, the University’s president according to its website–a role that typically serves as an institution’s public face–was similarly invisible.

Making matters stranger, the president of the university listed on the South Dakota business license was “Xuanhua Fan.”

Following USA Today’s multiple phone calls and inquiries, RNU apparently pulled its website offline. It currently only says that the site is “down for maintenance” and to “please check back again soon.”

RNU also doesn’t appear to have any classrooms or faculty offices.

“Twice, on Jan. 29 and Feb. 12, an Argus Leader reporter visited the listed addresses for Reagan National University,” the report stated.

RNU also has a placement rate of zero-percent, meaning none of its graduates appear to be employed. The details were bizarre:


When reporters called the number listed on RNU’s website, someone answered the phone saying, “Reagan National University.” They said they were uninterested in an interview before promptly hanging up.

SOURCE

“We need to get this right for our students, and we need to get this right for our institutions of higher education,” DeVos said at the time. “Once fully implemented, the current rules would unfairly and arbitrarily limit students’ ability to pursue certain types of higher-education and career-training programs.”

yes, the kind that rip them off and provide them with no education.

we seem to have a differing view of what "choice" is.

DeVos Funnels Coronavirus Relief Funds to Favored Private and Religious Schools
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, using discretion written into the coronavirus stabilization law, is using millions of dollars to pursue long-sought policy goals that Congress has blocked.
Erica L. Green

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions turned upside down by the pandemic shutdowns, about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billion to elementary and secondary schools, and the rest for state governments.

Ms. DeVos has used $180 million of those dollars to encourage states to create “microgrants” that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.

And she has nearly depleted the 2.5 percent of higher education funding, about $350 million, set aside for struggling colleges to bolster small colleges — many of them private, religious or on the margins of higher education — regardless of need. The Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, a private college in Wisconsin that has a website debunking claims that it is a cult, received about $495,000.

Bergin University of Canine Studies in California said its $472,850 allocation was a “godsend.”

“I think we are one of the most important educational institutions out there right now,” said its founder, Bonnie Bergin, who is credited with inventing the service dog.

On the Senate floor this week, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, accused Ms. DeVos of ...

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Dept. Of Education Discloses Illegal Seizure Of $2.2 Billion From Student Loan Borrowers
Adam S. Minsky, Esq.

In response to a class action lawsuit filed by student loan borrowers, the U.S. Department of Education disclosed that it had intercepted and seized over $2.2 billion in tax refunds owed to a million student loan borrowers, in violation of the CARES Act.

The CARES Act suspended all collections on defaulted federally-held student loans from March 13, 2020 until September 30, 2020. The Act mandates that involuntary collections efforts by the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Treasury — including the interception and seizure of tax refunds — are to be suspended.

A spokesperson for the Department stated that those seized tax refunds have been returned to borrowers. However, student loan borrowers in the suit allege otherwise. The lead Plaintiff in the class action suit claims that the government intercepted a nearly $7,000 tax refund owed to both her and her husband in April, in violation of the CARES Act. Improperly seized tax refunds are supposed to be returned to impacted student loan borrowers, but the lawsuit alleges that this has not happened....

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Dubious educational agency backed by Trump and DeVos is stripped of its powers
Walter Einenkel

Reagan National University in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is no longer an accredited university. To anyone with half an education, this is no surprise. The only reason the school had received accreditation in the first place was because under previous Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the dubious Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges & Schools (ACICS) was resurrected to give it the distinction. This is a school that USA Today investigated and found had “no students, no faculty and no classrooms.”

On June 2, the Biden administration’s Education Department announced that Reagan National University lost its accreditation and would no longer receive federal funds for the no students, no classrooms, and no faculty that it never had. In fact, Deputy Undersecretary for Education Jordan Matsudaira wrote that ACICS would no longer be recognized as a worthwhile arbiter of which schools should and should not receive federal funds. “ACICS’s significant and systemic non-compliance with multiple regulatory recognition criteria leaves me no reasonable option but to terminate its recognition, effective immediately.”

After the ACICS had accredited ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges, and Brightwood College—all for-profit schools that closed after stealing billions from students and cheating them out of an education—President Barack Obama stripped the agency of its powers. DeVos and Donald Trump then reinstated the disgraced agency’s powers, and one of the first places ACICS accredited was the student and faculty-free Reagan National University. As USA Today found when they investigated the school last year:



Only the best people. The Biden administration’s move means that about 60 colleges that received their accreditation from ACICS will now have “18 months to find a new accreditor if they want to keep accessing federal money.” For its part, ACICS told the press that it will be appealing this decision and, according to a statement put on ACICS’ website:

I mean, accrediting a school with no faculty and no student body is “no bueno.” (That’s first-year, high school language Spanish for “no good.”) Maybe ACICS will give ...

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6 ... its-powers

Live links at source

Trump U accreditation was from ACICS?

Was it even accredited?