WASHINGTON — Incomplete written guidelines and penalties that had not been updated since 2016.
Significant turnover and reductions among staff.
Changing agency priorities and department probes put “on hold.”
Over the past six years, these problems have stifled the U.S. Department of Education’s investigations team that is supposed to probe colleges that misrepresent themselves to the public, according to a recent report by a government watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Much of the period studied was during the Trump administration.
As a result of misrepresentation by colleges, students may have trouble graduating, paying back their loans, or finding a job.
“When planning for college, students and parents should be able to trust that institutions are providing accurate information about their programs and their graduates’ success,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, in a statement.
“Unfortunately, as this report confirms, the previous administration chose to effectively ignore its responsibility to hold colleges accountable for misrepresenting themselves to students and the public.”
Colleges or universities that engage in substantial misrepresentation “make certain false or misleading statements — or omissions—about (their) programs, costs, or graduate employment, that students or others could rely on to their detriment,” according to the GAO report.
For example, if a college provides untrue information about the number of graduates that get jobs in their chosen field, the college is engaged in substantial misrepresentation.
How colleges are investigated
Substantial misrepresentation by postsecondary schools is a violation of federal law.
The Department of Education established the Student Aid Enforcement Unit under the Office of Federal Student Aid in 2016 to enforce this regulation.
The unit’s Investigations Group has the authority to investigate and apply fines to colleges that substantially misrepresent themselves to the public, and deny their participation in federal student aid programs — a major blow for almost every institution of higher education.
However, the authors of the report found both the Investigations Group and its parent Student Aid Enforcement Unit had largely been sidelined in misrepresentation investigations over the past six years.
From fiscal years 2016 through 2021, largely under the Trump administration, the Department of Education imposed penalties against 13 universities for substantial misrepresentation.
Of the schools that were penalized, 10 were for-profit universities, two were private nonprofit schools, and one was a public research university. No schools that violated the law were publicly named in the GAO report.
Yet the Investigations Group only had direct involvement in two of the 13 misrepresentation probes noted, a number the authors attributed to “management priorities that had shifted away from investigations.” During this time, investigations were generally led by the School Eligibility and Oversight Service Group, a separate oversight branch also within the Office of Federal Student Aid.
The GAO team further found that all four active investigations being conducted by the Investigations Group were halted by senior management in 2017, the first year of the Trump administration.
From 2018 to 2020, the Investigations Group opened only one investigation into substantial misrepresentation by a college or university.
“Officials we spoke to were not able to explain the reason or provide documentation for the decision to place investigations on hold, but said their understanding was that management priorities had shifted away from conducting investigations,” the GAO report said. “Based on this decision, officials said that the Investigations Group stopped almost all of its investigations work.”
A watchdog says the feds aren’t doing enough to investigate problem colleges