In his report published on the Huffington Post, lawyer Davied Halperin of RepublicReport.org said that the fraud allegations brought about by former employees of the Harris School of Business was just the tip of the iceberg. Halperin, pointing to several sources, claimed that for-profit educational institutions like the Premier Education Group-owned Harris have been violating provisions of a federal law for years.
On Thursday, Halperin said a New York Times article featured ex-workers of the Harris School filed a suit under under the federal whistleblower law and claimed that the school misleads its students of its educational programs' value repeatedly and allows students to enroll in their programs despite the fact that some do not have the chances of landing a job due to felony or drug convictions.
Halperin wrote that aside from the alleged fraud, Harris is also guilty of noncompliance of the other provisions of the federal gainful employment rule. Despite receiving around $100 million annually in taxpayer money for education aid, Harris reportedly chose not to provide or made its students aware of the job statistics like graduation rates and job placement statistics the law has required all educational institutions on their websites since 2011. Aside from Harris, American Commercial College in Texas and Globe University were also involved in lawsuits regarding job placement disclosures, the lawyer said.
Halperin also cited a suit against another for-profit college, Education Management Corporation (EDMC), who has been complained by a whistleblower for the school's failure to bar payments to admission staffers by colleges if student recruit quotas are not met.
However, the chances that not-for-profit colleges and schools committing fraud will be smaller soon. Halperin said that the White House under US President Barack Obama has been mulling over revisions to the gainful employment rule, which would threaten the education aid for-profit schools get supposedly for their students.
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