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Department Of Education Creates Student Aid Enforcement Office

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

The U.S. Department of Education says it wants to protect students from colleges and universities that claim they are better than they are, so it's created a new office to do that. NPR's Cory Turner explains.

CORY TURNER, BYLINE: It's called the Federal Student Aid Enforcement Unit. Earlier today, over a scratchy phone line, acting Education Secretary John B. King, Jr. explained that when Americans invest their time and money in higher ed -

JOHN B. KING JR.: They have a right to expect they'll actually get an education that leads to a better life for them and their family.

TURNER: When that doesn't happen, King said, we all pay the price. On the list of things the new unit will be looking out for is misleading marketing, where a school inflates its graduation rate or the employment prospects of its graduates. The group will be led by Robert Kaye, an experienced consumer protection lawyer who spent many years at the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC recently filed suit against DeVry University, alleging it painted an all-too-rosy picture of its students' job placement rates and salaries after graduation, an allegation DeVry says it will vigorously contest. Cory Turner, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Cory Turner reports and edits for the NPR Ed team. He's helped lead several of the team's signature reporting projects, including "The Truth About America's Graduation Rate" (2015), the groundbreaking "School Money" series (2016), "Raising Kings: A Year Of Love And Struggle At Ron Brown College Prep" (2017), and the NPR Life Kit parenting podcast with Sesame Workshop (2019). His year-long investigation with NPR's Chris Arnold, "The Trouble With TEACH Grants" (2018), led the U.S. Department of Education to change the rules of a troubled federal grant program that had unfairly hurt thousands of teachers.