Hillary’s For-Profit Education The company that paid Bill doesn’t do well on the Obama scorecard.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillarys-for-profit-education-1442273388
Hillary Clinton has vowed to crack down on for-profit colleges. Very interesting. We wonder if she or her aides have looked at the new “college scorecard” that the Obama Administration released on the weekend.
The online tool, which provides data on college costs, graduation rates, average graduate debt and future earnings, is intended to help would-be students make more informed decisions. Who knows if kids will be enlightened, but the scorecard is a better alternative to the ratings plan that the White House scrapped over the summer to tie student aid to the government’s value judgments.
A major political goal of the scorecard is to steer students away from for-profit colleges, which educate a disproportionate share of low-income and non-traditional students like single parents. As a result, for-profit schools don’t perform as well as nonprofit and public colleges on measures like debt and graduation rates on the Obama scorecard.
Consider Laureate International Universities, based in Baltimore. According to Bill and Hillary’s tax records, Laureate paid Bill $16.5 million to serve as its “honorary chancellor” from April 2010 to April 2015. Laureate has also donated between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. It was probably no coincidence that Mr. Clinton dropped off Laureate’s payroll when his wife began running for President.
Laureate operates more than 80 colleges world-wide—most in developing countries—and five are located in the U.S. This allows investors to skirt the White House’s “gainful employment” regulation because schools that don’t draw federal aid don’t have to disclose their students’ median debt and job placement rates.
While such for-profits as Corinthian, ITT Tech and Education Management Corporation have drawn government scrutiny, Laureate seems to have avoided political attention. However, it performs no better than other profit-making schools on the Obama scorecard.
At Laureate’s Walden University in Minneapolis—which says it has “among the lowest default rates” among all U.S. universities—a mere 44% of grads are paying down their student debt compared to 67% nationwide. The graduation rate at Laureate’s NewSchool of Architecture and Design in San Diego is 33%, and the average student graduates with $43,417 in government loans. According to the College Board, only about one fifth of bachelor degree recipients graduate with $40,000 or more in loans.
Only 31% of students who enroll at another Laureate school, Santa Fe University of Art and Design, graduate. After 10 years, a mere 58% earn more than Americans with a high school diploma.
For all we know Laureate is a splendid institution. But keep in mind that these are the metrics the Obama Administration wants to publicize to help steer students away from schools like Laureate’s.
Yet for years Bill and Hillary tapped Laureate without embarrassment as a source of income and foundation donations. Someone should ask Mrs. Clinton why her husband lent their name to a for-profit school that does so poorly on the Obama Administration’s scorecard.
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