Dive Summary:
- Strong opposition from for-profit schools and influential lawmakers folded a Wisconsin Education Approval Board committee responsible for developing standards for for-profits.
- The committee's one and only meeting took place on Feb. 22, when representatives from a number of for-profit colleges provided testimony opposing the regulation efforts, which were aimed at requiring for-profits to show that at least 60% of students completed their programs and got jobs in their fields.
- Three members of the seven-member approval board were replaced by Gov. Scott Walker in early February, with one position left vacant, and Rep. Steve Nass, who serves as chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly's higher education committee, recommended on March 12 that the board's committee should be suspended in favor of working with for-profit schools "in a more cooperative atmosphere."
From the article:
... "The basic narrative is pretty much the same," said Barmak Nassirian, a Washington, D.C. independent education policy analyst who's studied for-profit colleges for two decades. "The industry obviously put a full-court press on and killed the effort." ...