Relatively unnoticed in the national press has been a fairly vicious in-state back-and-forth between the leadership of Florida State College at Jacksonville and for-profit Keiser University. Here are some of the relevant stories:
- Emails spice up lawsuit over private colleges (Oct. 5)
- Short-seller Steve Eisman is in trouble with a for-profit university over this email (Oct. 5)
- For-profit college lawyer thinks this woman is using short-seller Steve Eisman (Oct. 5)
- Keiser lawsuit against FSCM may showcase college scorn (Oct. 5)
- For-profit colleges slam state schools (Oct. 11)
Keiser is blaming the leadership of FSCJ for lumping all for-profit colleges and universities together in terms of loan obligations and graduation rates. Unusual items in the lawsuit: the named parties are FSCJ's president and its vice president for government relations (i.e., lobbying), with some signs that the vice president (Susan Lehr) was specifically responsible for tarring the reputations of for-profit institutions. Yikes: lobbyists are supposed to be the liaisons who smooth over relationships with all sorts of government officials, but if the reporting is to believed, apparently Lehr's responsibility was to be the pit bull of Jacksonville's community college. Second odd item: Keiser's general counsel is a member of the Florida legislature. He's a Democrat, so he doesn't have significant power over the state college system, but it's weird.
Thus far, since the original filing, things have been mum, but I don't know if that's because reporters are spread thin in that part of the state or because the parties are trying to settle this without additional embarrassment.
Disclosure: the United Faculty of Florida (of whom I am a steering committee member and chapter president) represents faculty at FSCJ.
Not so weird — if you know the history behind this — proprietary schools versus the public schools.
HEA 1972 included the requirement of 1202 Commissions at the state level — one objective was to smooth over and integrate FP and NFP sectors. Nothing happened. Subsequent politics also treated them similarly, identically, in fact — but the perceived status and legitimacy gap between them recently surged into view with the US DOE “gainful employment” rulemaking proposals.
I have to admit that I considered sending a Waldman letter — these NFP responses are a matter of public record — and if the responses can be made public, this would benefit HE researchers immensely.