BETSY DEVOS/EDUCATION/LOBBYING: “Early this year, Charlotte School of Law looked ready to collapse. The government had cut off the private equity-backed, for-profit law school’s access to federal student loans, determining in a review that it had violated federal law and misled students, allegations the school denied. But for a school that more than nine in 10 students borrow money to attend, the decision had the ring of a death knell.
Until Donald Trump took office.
One day before Betsy DeVos was confirmed as secretary of education, Charlotte Law hired the adviser who had just steered her through her confirmation hearings to lobby her agency on its behalf. Lauren Maddox, a lobbyist with the Podesta Group in Washington and a former Education Department spokeswoman, has worked for senior Republicans in Congress. But in lobbying for Charlotte Law, she and her colleagues would appear to have a tougher task: Charlotte graduates are leaving school owing more than three times as much on their loans as they wind up earning every year. Fewer than half pass the bar in their first try.
Some $130,000 in fees later, the lobbying effort appears to have paid off. Last week, according to a copy of official correspondence reviewed by Bloomberg News, DeVos’s agency told the law school that—provided it puts up $6 million in collateral and agrees to certain conditions, such as offering refunds to first-years and hiring a monitor—it would consider reinstating its access to the federal student-aid program.”
-Shahien Nasiripour, “DeVos Offers a Lifeline to For-Profit Law School That Hired Her Former Adviser,” Bloomberg, Aug. 2, 2017 07:11am