Top Chef All Star Gets For-Profit College Issue Wrong

(Flickr/Rep. Virginia Foxx)

Tiffany Derry, of Top Chef All-Stars, has written an opinion piece for The Hill this week publicly fighting the “gainful employment” regulation proposed by the Department of Education. Derry says this proposed rule is bad because, “The proposed regulation is going to hurt students who need help the most: students who are considered at-risk, minority and low-income or older students who may be raising a family by themselves.”

Her op-ed was accompanied by lobby visits to Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus this week about the regulation.

The proposed regulation will look at default rates and debt-to-earnings ratios, but her conclusion that the regulation would “limit federal aid to students” is flat-out wrong. Under this regulation, it isn’t the student who won’t get funding; it is specific programs at schools that risk getting their funding pulled because too many of their students end up with overwhelming debt. Students are welcome to get financial aid for programs that provide better educational value.

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Lanny Davis and the Left

(AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Many people may have taken the holiday off, but Lanny Davis, lobbyist for many special interests in Washington, including for-profit colleges in their quest to avoid accountability, did not. It turns out he was very busy at the end of 2010. Here’s a roundup of all things Lanny Davis from the last couple weeks:

1. In addition to having represented Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has been accused of egregious human rights violations in his 30-year tenure, Davis told Salon on Dec. 21 that he would be representing Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo, who has also been accused of horrendous human rights violations in his tenure as the country’s leader.
2. Davis quit his gig with Gbagbo just a few days later, as Salon’s Justin Elliot reported on Dec. 30. Davis reportedly had entered into an agreement to represent Gbagbo for $100,000 a month.
3. The New York Times published a front-page story on Dec. 30, concluding that Davis, who has long trumpeted his credentials as a “liberal Democrat,” is now “scrambling to defend himself” and has “come under unusually vociferous attacks in recent months, from a diverse array of advocates representing everyone from college students and mothers of poor children, to diplomats and international human rights advocates.” Campus Progress, it should be noted, is one of those organizations, since Davis lobbies to oppose common-sense requirements on for-profit schools.
4. In The Hill on Dec. 29, Davis reflected on 2010, saying that he was a “liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Obama and all his policies.” Davis is either unaware of the fact that the Obama administration runs the Department of Education, which proposed tightened regulations on the for-profit industry, or he is not actually a defender of all of Obama’s policies.

Cross posted.