In a meeting early this year at the U.S. Department of Education headquarters, a group of Department staffers led by senior adviser Diane Auer Jones told a delegation from Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH) led by CEO Brent Richardson to publicly represent that two of the company’s Art Institutes schools remained accredited, even though the schools’ accreditor had written the company a letter indicating that the schools were presently “not accredited.”
A source close to and supportive of DCEH management provided this account to Republic Report and defended the Department’s decision and DCEH’s subsequent action to post on the schools’ website the words “We remain accredited.” The source argued that the accreditor, Higher Learning Commission (HLC), had acted inappropriately in placing the schools on “candidate” status following DCEH’s takeover of their operations and that no student was misled because the schools remained eligible to receive federal student financial aid and because the retroactive restoration of the schools’ accreditation was inevitable. This source says that HLC’s action to move the schools to candidate status was “all about a political war between the accreditors and the Department.”
But the Art Institutes students who suddenly learned they were attending a non-accredited school certainly do feel misled...
https://www.republicreport.org/2018/devos-aide-tailors-decisions-to-the-predatory-colleges-who-employed-her/