Durbin, Brown Caution University Of Arizona On Its Bid To Purchase Predatory For-Profit College
SPRINGFIELD – U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) today sent a letter to the President of the University of Arizona (UA) urging the school to take steps to protect students after it announced the purchase of Ashford University, a for-profit college that has long been the subject of numerous state and federal investigations and lawsuits for fraudulent and predatory practices. Despite a long history of troubling practices, if the transaction is consummated, Zovio – which owns Ashford University – will reportedly continue to provide “education technology services” including “managing marketing, student recruitment and retention, student success, coaching, financial services, instructional design, and technology” for the new UA-owned institution dubbed “University of Arizona Global Campus”. In other words, the organization—and in some cases individuals—responsible for Ashford’s shameful record as a for-profit college are slated to continue to be responsible for a variety of key functions of the UA Global Campus—many of those the very functions for which Ashford was investigated and sued.
Durbin and Brown said that should this transaction move forward, the Board of Trustees must put in place clear policies, including abandoning the use of mandatory arbitration clauses and class action bans, and independent oversight structures to ensure that new entity is not operated like Ashford.
“First, let us say that we believe UA’s embrace of Ashford through this transaction poses major risks for your current students and your institution’s reputation as one of the nation’s top public universities. Ashford, now owned by Zovio, has been a major player during a period of the last two decades that a group of state attorneys general referred to as “open season” on students due to the systemic defrauding of students and fleecing of taxpayers across the for-profit college industry,” Durbin and the Senators wrote. “Without clear protections for students built into this transaction by UA, its accreditors, and the Department of Education, Arizona taxpayers risk becoming owners of a predatory for-profit college cloaked in the aura of your prestigious university.”
In 2017, the Senators raised similar concerns over the purchase of for-profit Kaplan University by Purdue University.
Full text of today’s letter is available here and below: