The Code of Conduct That Wasn’t

Two years ago, a for-profit college industry group unveiled a voluntary code of conduct for its members. The organization, known as the Foundation for Educational Success, said that the code would “provide strong new student protections; guidelines for training, enrollment, and financial aid; and include an enforcement mechanism to ensure that participating schools adhere to the principles of the new standards.”

More than a dozen for-profit college companies, including Career Education Corporation and Kaplan Higher Education, pledged to abide by the code. Meanwhile, the industry’s stalwart supporters in Congress held up the code as evidence that the sector could police itself.

At the time, I wrote a post on Higher Ed Watch questioning whether this was “a serious effort to improve industry standards or simply a public relations gambit that the group hopes to use to stave off any further government attempts to rein in the industry?”

Well now we have our answer. According to a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week:

Today hardly any trace of the effort can be found. The Foundation for Educational Success, which was coordinating the effort, no longer exists…In addition, the foundation’s Web site was dormant as of Friday, displaying only a notice from GoDaddy.com stating that the domain name expired on September 7 and was pending renewal or deletion. As of Monday, the domain had had apparently been bought and the Web site converted to a health blog unrelated to for-profit higher education.

Need I say more?

[For more on this, check out David Halperin's excellent reporting in the Huffington Post.]"