And that’s the other side of the EDMC story. I have known Art Institutes faculty who are outstanding teachers and practitioners. I visited one school a few years ago and saw a serious, dedicated faculty in action. I know that many students of these teachers have obtained great jobs in visual arts, television and film, and the music industry. When I ran the organization Campus Progress, we strongly supported a remarkable young cartoonist named Matt Bors, who earlier this year was presented at the Library of Congress with the Herblock Prize for excellence in editorial cartooning and was the runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. Matt is a graduate of the Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

So is the Art Institutes a scam school or a real school? After some investigation, I think the answer is this: The Art Institutes was a for-profit college that often worked, that genuinely helped many students to train for successful careers. But then, mostly during the George W. Bush Administration, the for-profit college industry aggressively lobbied Washington to eliminate any kind of accountability for schools receiving federal tax dollars. In 2002, the Bush Administration gutted enforcement of rules to prevent abusive recruiting practices. In 2006, Congress, ratifying the wishes of for-profit college lobbyists and their allies in the Bush Administration, allowed colleges that provide most their instruction online to qualify for federal student aid.

Those changes, and an overall lack of standards, skewed the incentives for for-profit college companies. A race to the bottom — a race to maximize profits by short-changing students and taxpayers — ensued. It propelled a decade of waste, fraud, and abuse with taxpayer dollars by this industry, which now hauls in about $32 billion a year in federal aid.