No regulatory laws covering for profit schools; history repeating itself

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/03/california

WOW, Todays issues of Inside HigerEd, contains this article about another for profit school that has no regulatory laws imposed on it. And the students have been victimized by the predatory school.

As officials in California have grappled for more than two years with a structure and law for regulating for-profit colleges in the state, there has been much speculation about hypothetical ways in which the expiration of the law governing for-profit regulation could limit the ability of students to seek redress from career colleges for perceived wrongs. But examples of actual effects have been hard to come by.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit offered one on Friday, though. A three-judge panel of the court tossed out a former student's lawsuit against DeVry University, saying that it could not consider an appeal of a lower court's decision October 2007 against him because the California Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education Reform Act, "on which all of [the student's] claims are based, was repealed" without a clause that continued its enforcement. California has not passed a new law to succeed the expired one. "Because we cannot grant any effective relief, we lack jurisdiction to entertain this appeal."

DeVry officials played down the significance of the appeals court's ruling, noting that the lower court judge had fully rejected Saro Daghlian's accusations that DeVry had violated California law by failing to provide written disclosure explaining that credits he earned there might not transfer to other colleges. California's private postsecondary law, which was in effect at the time of Daghlian's suit, required such disclosure.

DeVry got sued for a huge number over a disclosure that it was never appropriate for it to have had to make, and made anyway. The court looked at it extremely carefully" and found that DeVry was right. "The guy had his recourse," Davis added, "and justice was done."

J. Mark Moore, a lawyer for Daghlian, the former student, said that the absence of an enforceable California law absolutely impaired his client's ability to benefit from the full legal protections due to him.

Yet his ability to establish that on appeal is basically over, because the State of California let these statutes get repealed without a savings clause. It wiped out our case," and with it Daghlian's recourse to legal remedies in California, Moore said.

"California's lack of regulatory structure has caused confusion for students and institution," said Sharon Thomas Parrott, senior vice president for government and regulatory affairs and chief compliance officer at DeVry. That's why "we have been working in support of legislation that does give California the regulatory structure to have oversight over all of the institutions" -- legislation that consumer advocates and for-profit college officials continue to view through different lenses.


YES once again, the lack of regulatory oversight of for profit schools has created ANOTHER class of victims, just like it did in the 1980's.. And like the students of old, these kids will soon feel the bite of a worthless education and student loan bills that they cannot pay, when they fall into default.