A report from Democrats on the House education committee on Tuesday accused Education Undersecretary Diane Auer Jones of going to “extraordinary lengths” to help Dream Center Education Holdings after two of its schools lost accreditation.
However, Education Department spokeswoman Angela Morabito quickly dismissed the report as “blatantly political.”
According to the report, Dream Center, a Los Angeles-based religious organization, in 2018 purchased more than 100 campuses from the for-profit Education Management Corporation with the intention of running them as nonprofit programs. During the transaction, two campuses, the Art Institute of Colorado and the Illinois Art Institute, lost their accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission, a regional accreditor.
As it has before during an investigation by the committee into the now-defunct chain, the report charged that Dream Center continued to tell its students and the public on its website that it was accredited for six months. During that time, the Education Department continued to make payments to Dream Center even though for-profit institutions can only receive federal student loan payments if they are fully accredited.