Accreditor Exposes Sensitive Student Information in ‘AI University’ Case

The saga of Maestro College, the for-profit institution where an AI chatbot carries out most instruction, has deepened. The institution’s accreditor, seemingly by mistake, handed over to a Maestro student reams of information about her peers, including their names, emails, and details about personal circumstances, like their medical conditions and mental health treatments.

That disclosure, even if inadvertent, raises concerns about the efficacy of the accreditor’s oversight, a relevant consideration given its reputation as a lackadaisical college regulator. The accreditor, the Council on Occupational Education, or COE, is awaiting the U.S. Department of Education’s decision on whether to renew its recognition, the status that allows colleges it accredits to access federal financial aid. 

COE revoked Maestro’s accreditation last month, citing that the college violated its rule that at least a quarter of full-time students take in-person courses. Maestro officials are appealing that decision. Our investigation of the school revealed many flaws in Maestro’s model, though: it was marketed as free, but appeared designed to extract as much financial aid from students as possible. And as the college was originally conceived, students would never have to interact with faculty members, likely flouting federal regulations.

Caught in the fallout are Maestro’s students, many of whom are understandably uncertain about their educational futures. Maestro would most likely close without accreditation, because it is needed to access federal aid—money the college needs to stay in business.

Randi Giammona, who received the dossier of student information from COE, told me in an interview that she experienced problems with the school firsthand. She said she discovered Maestro through a Facebook advertisement last year, but grew disillusioned with the college after she was struggling with her studies and couldn’t immediately find a faculty member to help her. 

Earlier this year, Giammona filed a complaint against Maestro with the accreditor, in part about the lack of student and faculty interactions. The college then drafted a response to Giammona’s complaint, which it submitted to COE. 

That document contained a log of when and how often Maestro officials were calling students to check in, as well as notes about students’ personal lives if they answered the phone. Someone attempted to redact the student names and emails in the log, but failed. Highlighting and then copying the text beneath the black box revealed the students’ identities.

In one instance, a Maestro official spoke to a student who said he was falling behind after he had broken his arm and dislocated a finger. 

“He feels depressed and is scared he’s going to fail the course,” the official wrote. “He contacted student services but they told him it wasn’t a good enough medical reason for an extension. Probably AT RISK.”

In another example, a Maestro official identified a student who had checked into “a mental health rehab.”

All of this background on students, and their names, were visible to Giammona. She said a COE representative had simply forwarded her the document in an email. 

“I have medical information,” Giammona told me. “One student is in a halfway house. I had their caseworker’s phone number and full name, their full name. Like, thank God it came to me in this situation because I know I’m really fighting for what’s right. But that could have been really horrible.”

The accreditor’s president, Kirk Nooks, did not respond to two requests for comment on Maestro and the leaked information. 

It’s likely that the disclosure broke privacy laws, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, which specifically protects students’ educational records.

“FERPA and its implementing regulations have a process in place to ensure that accrediting agencies can receive the information they need to perform their accreditation functions,” Jill Siegelbaum, a former attorney for the Education Department, now a partner at the law firm Sligo Law Group, said in an interview. “However, FERPA also has provisions to ensure those disclosures don’t result in a public free-for-all for students’ confidential information.”

Meanwhile, an attorney for Maestro recently contacted Giammona about the records. 

She had created a Reddit forum called “Maestro Maybes,” where students can share unvarnished opinions of the college, not all of them positive. It’s a foil to Maestro’s official Reddit, where college representatives post updates, but also sometimes remove unflattering posts and comments about the school.

Maestro’s attorney wrote to Giammona, claiming she was violating an identity theft law in Texas, where Maestro is based, after she posted the document to the Maestro Maybes Reddit. The attorney demanded Giammona delete the information from Reddit, which she has.

The attorney then wrote that the college would strike a deal with Giammona, including helping her transfer out of Maestro, if she would “refrain from further posting any derogatory and/or factually false information to social media.”

Giammona said she’s not sure of next steps, but felt like Maestro had targeted her and others as “underprivileged people.” Research has shown for-profit colleges like Maestro do tend to try to enroll vulnerable populations, including Black and Latino students.

“I’m just a single mom, I’m a home help aid for my mom, I was just trying to build a better life for all of us,” Giammona said.

Maestro’s appeal is ongoing. This month, COE initially argued Maestro officials withdrew the appeal, a claim they refuted, saying they would only drop it if COE approved its teach-out plan, outlining where and how students can continue their studies if it loses accreditation. 

COE recently acknowledged Maestro intends to continue on with the appeal.