Principal deputy undersecretary of Education Diane Auer Jones has been a major target of congressional Democrats’ inquiries into the Dream Center.
A top adviser to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos exceeded her authority when she helped struggling for-profit colleges access hundreds of millions of dollars of federal money, according to the preliminary findings of a review by the Education Department’s internal watchdog.
A 10-page summary of the findings obtained by POLITICO describes failures in how the Trump administration approved and oversaw business deals involving three for-profit college chains. They operated dozens of campuses across the country under the brands Argosy University, South University and the Art Institutes.
The yearlong saga over the purchase of the schools by Dream Center Educational Holdings, and their subsequent collapse, has already produced a slew of legal fights. It has also spurred numerous congressional inquiries by Democrats, who view the episode as an egregious example of the Trump administration pulling strings for the for-profit education industry.
