Agency Urges Crackdown on For-Profit Schools, Test Administrators
A federal watchdog agency has called on the Education Department to crack down on for-profit colleges and test administrators after an investigation showed high default rates on student loans and cheating on some exams. The problem lies with an Education Department that has "significant vulnerabilities" in its oversight, the Government Accountability Office told Congress in a recent report.
The GAO called on the department to take several steps, including monitoring for-profit schools and testing programs more closely and ensuring that students don’t get high school diplomas from diploma mills — another problem that was identified. Students can qualify for federal student loans and other aid if they have diplomas or pass these tests. If they default on the loans, federal taxpayers must pick up the cost.
In response, Education Department officials said they expect to implement new rules."We kind of knew we had this issue, and we began to tighten up on our monitoring and test-publishing before the GAO report," said Jeff Baker with the department’s office of federal student aid.
The Career College Association in Washington, D.C., a national group that represents career and for-profit schools, said in a statement that "we share the government’s interest in eliminating any form of fraud and abuse associated with" the federal financial aid program. But the report should be taken in context, the association said. "Nothing in the GAO report suggests that the practice of admitting unqualified students is widespread or indicative of the sector as a whole," the statement said.
Recommendations The federal Government Accountability Office recommended that the Education Department:
-Strengthen its monitoring of for-profit schools and the ability-to-benefit test program. Officials should look at data where test administrators improperly oversaw tests and use that data to identify potential future abuses.
-Require test publishers to conduct an analysis about every 18 months of ATB tests in addition to the current three-year analysis to help better identify irregularities.
-Have an action plan to prevent test administrators who allow cheating from getting additional work from the exam’s publishers.
-Have easily accessible information available — for example on a Web site — that lists state-approved high schools. Officials can then more easily identify diploma mills. [Star-Telegram]
