For-profit schools have not been faring too well on Wall Street lately. The stock price of Apollo Group, the owner of the University of Phoenix, has dropped by 80 percent from its peak. Career Education Corporation is also down 80 percent; ITT Education, 96 percent; DeVry, 50 percent. Corinthian Colleges, now in bankruptcy, is trading at under a penny a share, less than one percent of its value just over a year ago.

The collapse of for-profit stocks may be just the wake-up call that is needed to prompt a restructuring of the industry and of its oversight. But a telling error in Friday’s coverage of the plunge serves as a sobering reminder of just how difficult it can be to keep education entrepreneurs’ eyes on the right prize — quality and …show more content…
Not the part about predatory recruitment practices — that did happen again. No, company executives were upset that the results of the investigation had been seen by the public. To prevent that from happening again, Apollo went to Congress to demand that the results of investigations be shared with the company’s many lobbyists and lawyers for review and response before being released. In 2008, Congress did as Apollo requested, changing the law. The revised rules gave the company the hook it needed to entangle the agency in protracted battles, arguing over whether each sentence adequately takes into consideration the company’s perspective.

In effect, Congress gave education companies the right to slow down and edit investigations. All away from public view.

The change paid off immediately for Apollo. A 2009 review of Phoenix’s operations reportedly raised consumer protection concerns, but in the version that was released publicly many months later, the concerns had disappeared. (I worked at the Education Department in 2009-10 but was not involved in whatever negotiations led to the change in the content of the program