Recently, Education Corporations of America filed a lawsuit against President Trump and the United States government for carrying out their multiple orders for education related activities. On December 5, 2021, ECA announced that it was temporarily discontinuing its operations following an order from the federal court in Washington D.C. Pursuant to that order, ECA stated that it is permanently quitting its education-related activities and within the same day simultaneously laid off thousands of workers across the country. As per the lawsuit, ECA intends to file for bankruptcy on the date of the final judgment.
Education Corporation of America Lawsuit
The lawsuit against the United States government was filed by two entities namely, Education Management Association orEMA and Association for Independent Colleges and Universities or AICU. In its suit, the corporation asserts that the Trump administration’s Education Department (ED) and Secretary Price illegally conspired to illegally defraud the ED and universities of grant monies by falsely stating that they would achieve ‘academic integrity’ through these institutions.
The lawsuit further claims that the Secretary of Education, along with his close associates at Ivy League schools, conspired to form a sham “fact finding” committee which purported to look into the matter but could not produce any evidence of such fact. These supposed findings are said to have been used in the press and by other agencies with the aim of ‘distracting the public’ and furthering the Obama administration’s agenda.
Now, the question is, why has this for-profit education corporation decided to file a lawsuit?
The answer is simple. Through the course of the last several months, the ED and its members have been busy implementing many new strategies to ‘put education on hold’ as they deal with other matters within the bureaucracy.
Among the many documents filed in this case, one particular affidavit discusses the fact that ED’s Strategic Planning team, which includes Secretary Price, discussed ways to put education “on hold” in response to pending lawsuits.
Secretary Price and his cronies also discussed using “fake statistics” in order to “create a crisis.” Further, the ED’s Strategic Planning team discussed cutting “diploma programs” which serve as a lifeline to thousands of for-profit colleges and universities across the country.
Finally, it was revealed in this document that the ED would “divert” federal funding from the for-profit sector to these same ED universities in order to create a “supply chain effect” which would artificially inflate college costs through increased labor, technology and administrative costs.
Although we cannot verify all the specific information contained in these documents, what we do know is that these allegations are indeed true.
One of the individuals currently under investigation in this case is former Colorado state lawmaker, William Linder. Mr. Linder is currently under investigation after pleading guilty to fraud charges brought against him by the ED. He is currently facing sentencing in a Denver Federal Court.
Recently, we heard from a University of Michigan Law Professor who also happens to be an expert in these lawsuits.
We were curious about his comments concerning the ED’s strategic planning team’s ability to manipulate the results of their “evaluation process.” According to this expert, they “manipulated the information” in these documents in order to “get the students to embrace the higher standards.” This is not a surprising assessment; we have already seen how EDs have been caught manipulating data and statistics to “prove” that they are improving their schools. Will this case affect the outcome of another upcoming lawsuit against the ED?
