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Full Version: RA Clinton Scam Walden 'Under Review'
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Too much of a joke even for lefty libtard Minnesota, even if under the radar at the "gold standard" regional accreditor.

Quote:Oct 6 2016, 5:18 pm ET
For-Profit Walden U., Once Tied to Bill Clinton, Put Under Review
by Anna R. Schecter

Minnesota education officials have launched a review of online PhD programs at a for-profit college with ties to former President Bill Clinton.

"We have seen an increased number of complaints related to dissertations at Walden University," Sandy Connolly of the Minnesota Office of Higher Education told NBC News.

[Image: 2016-08-23t22-41-01-966z--1280x720.nbcne...00-440.jpg]
Inside Bill Clinton's Lucrative Work With For-Profit Education Company 3:54

The review follows an NBC News report on Minneapolis-based Walden, including interviews with some students who felt victimized by its practices and were saddled with large student loans.

Related: Hillary Blasts For-Profit College, but Bill Took Millions from One


Walden is the U.S. flagship of Laureate Education, which paid "honorary chancellor" Bill Clinton $17.6 million over five years before he stepped down in 2015 just ahead of wife Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign run.

Elizabeth Talbot, manager of Institutional Legislation and Licensing at the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, said the agency is conducting "a qualitative and a quantitative analysis" of student complaints and comparing it to Walden's marketing materials.

"I want to make sure the proof is in the pudding that their marketing claims match with student outcome," Talbot said.

"Is it a policy issue, a culture issue or is it something more nefarious? And we don't know until we complete the program review."

She said that after the NBC News report in August, there was an increase in the number of individuals contacting her office and the state Attorney General's office about Walden.

Some of the Walden students interviewed by NBC claimed they were misled about how long it would take to get a dissertation approved and earn a doctorate and ended up with more debt than they anticipated.

Minnesota officials did not provide any details of the complaints it received, but Connolly said that based on the "number of nature" of them, "we are conducting a full program review of all online doctorate programs."

Dr. Kevin Kinser, head of Penn State's Department of Education and Policy Studies, said Minnesota's action is not surprising.

"What we've seen is state-level oversight, particularly of online, for-profit higher education, has become more robust — even more robust than the federal government, and certainly more than the accrediting agencies," Kinser said.

A spokesperson for Walden declined to comment.

While Bill Clinton has earned $22 million from for-profit education institutions — $17.6 of that from Laureate — his wife has been a vocal critic of for-profit schools, including her opponent's Trump University.

"Hillary Clinton has made it clear that all for-profit institutions should be held to the same standards and she will crack down on law-breaking for-profits by expanding support for federal regulators to enforce laws against deceptive marketing, fraud, and other illegal practices," a spokesman said in August.
Laureate = Walden
Clintons = Crooks

Laureate + Clintons = Crooked Walden

RA crooks are still crooks!  Lock them up!!

Quote:EXCLUSIVE: Clinton-Allied Education Firm Hid IRS Probe Prior To IPO Launch

Richard Pollock
Reporter
10:23 PM 01/30/2017

Laureate Education, Inc. — which on Wednesday will launch its IPO on NASDAQ — failed to tell investors in federal filings that IRS officials are reviewing congressional charges it had a “pay to play” relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton, The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group has learned.

Laureate’s relationship with the Clintons began in 2010, when it paid the former president $16.5 million as its “honorary chancellor” for five years. Baltimore-based Laureate — led by chairman and CEO Douglas Becker — also donated up to an additional $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.

And during former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s tenure, the Department of State’s U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $55 million to the International Youth Foundation (IYF), which is linked to Laureate and is chaired by Becker.

Laureate operates 71 educational institutions in 25 countries with a heavy presence in Latin America.

The issue came to a head in a July 15, 2016, letter to IRS Commissioner John Koskinen by 64 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives, saying such relationships create “an appearance that millions of dollars in taxpayer money was channeled to IYF by Secretary Clinton’s State Department as a kickback for her husband’s generous contract as an honorary Laureate chancellor.”

Koskinen informed the congressmen on July 22, 2016, that he referred the matter to the federal tax agency’s Exempt Operations Program, which regulates charities.

While Laureate did disclose the $16.5 million payment to Bill Clinton in its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), company officials said nothing about either the IRS referral or congressional concerns. The SEC requires firms planning IPOs to disclose all potential “risk factors” to investors.

Laureate is the biggest for-profit educational system in the country. As a candidate, Hillary Clinton scorned for-profit universities and the Obama administration forced several for-profit educational companies out of business.

Obama said for-profit schools exploited low-income students who were left with heavy debt and a near-useless degrees — yet both Clintons energetically supported Laureate.

Companies have broad discretion on disclosing liabilities, but Laura Anthony, founding partner of Legal and Compliance, Inc., a corporate securities and business transaction firm, told TheDCNF that failure to disclose problems can expose a company to future legal and market risks.

“If there is an omission of a risk factor, then there is exposure to the company and its agents,” Anthony said. “I can’t foresee what impact, if any, it’s going to have on stock price, which is driven by emotion as much as by anything else.”

But Anthony explained, “this information would have a detrimental impact on the company and the stock price … If that was my client, I would tell them it should be disclosed.”

Under the Securities Act of 1933, if there is a material misrepresentation or an omission of facts in an S-1, injured investors can sue a company and even the underwriters.

“An S-1 is a document allows an issuer to reduce its own risks by making the fullest possible disclosures about a particular adverse development going forward,” Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel told TheDCNF. “So, it’s in the interest of the issuer to disclose as much as possible of any potential risk.”

Ortel said Laureate’s relationship with the Clintons “reeks of the potential for ‘pay to play,’ and corruption and influence peddling. How do you defend paying Bill Clinton $16.5 million for part-time work?”

The Laureate IPO underwriters include Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan and BMO Capital Markets, according to its S-1. Laureate’s principal owners — who obtained the firm in 2007 through a leveraged buyout led by KKR —  include such figures as billionaire liberal activist George Soros and Microsoft’s Paul Allen.

Steven A. Cohen, another member of the original investor group, reached a settlement with the SEC for insider trading in January 2016, which bars him from managing money for outside investors until 2018.

“Governance is an issue because basically the company is dominated by the LBO firms,” Kathleen Smith told TheDCNF. Smith is a manager of IPO Exchange Traded Funds at the Greenwich, Conn.-based Renaissance Capital.

“On its 10-person board, the LBO investors have 7 seats. And most importantly of all, these insiders are going to have 98 percent voting control. This is not a friendly setup,” Smith said.

Laureate is also “still highly leveraged,” she added.

KKR and similar firms assumed $1.7 billion in debt when it privately purchased Laureate in 2007. That debt will not be eliminated by the $500 million that Laureate officials hope to raise in Wednesday’s IPO.

Laureate has suffered massive losses in recent years, reporting $85 million in losses in 2013, $162 million in 2014 and $315 million in 2015, according to its S-1.

The company also reported material weaknesses related to inadequate controls over key financial reports, and that it is facing a corruption investigation in Turkey.

Laureate has enlisted the help of other high-profile political figures. It added former World Bank president Robert Zoellick as an independent director to its board in 2013. Also in 2013, the International Finance Corporation, a World Bank subsidiary, invested $150 million in Laureate, increasing to $200 million, according to the  S-1.

Laureate also recruited former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, the last Mexican head of state from the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which governed the country as a monopoly party for 71 years.
Rats are jumping ship.  Leftist turdburger Walden about to go under?  RA Gold-Standard Walden degrees soon to be worth less than the paper they're printed on?  When they lock up Hillary will she give you a tuition refund?   Big Grin  Big Grin  Big Grin  Big Grin  Big Grin  Big Grin  Rolleyes

Quote:[Image: GettyImages-146344008-e1514418353143.jpg]

EXCLUSIVE: Top Execs Continue To Flee Clinton-Linked Laureate Education

Richard Pollock
Reporter

7:54 PM 12/27/2017

The most prestigious board member of Laureate Education has announced his departure from the firm, continuing a rapid exodus of top-level executives at the Clinton-connected company.

Robert Zoellick, a former World Bank president, will leave the company at the end of December, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned. His resignation follows on the heels of a number of unexpected departures since the company went public last February, as previously reported by TheDCNF. Those departures include the company’s founder and CEO, Douglas Becker, as well as its chief operating officer, chief legal officer, and its chief human resources officer.

The for-profit education company is best known for paying former President Bill Clinton nearly $18 million to serve as the “Honorary Chairman” at Laureate International Universities (LIU), the company’s main corporate entity. LIU also donated up to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to the Clinton Foundation’s website.

The departure of such high-level executives “is very unusual,” according to Aswath Damodaran, a professor of finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches corporate finance and equity valuation.

“Right after an IPO, the top management departs. It’s not good news,” Damodaran told TheDCNF last October, stressing that executives fleeing for the doors following an IPO is “never a good sign.”

A World Bank entity called the International Finance Corporation awarded a $150 million investment to Laureate in Jan. 2013 during Zoellick’s term. IFC later increased the amount to $200 million. The company announced in Dec. 2013 Zoellick was joining the firm’s board.

When Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, Laureate’s Becker also received $17 million for another of his organizations called International Youth Foundation. The IYF funds came from the State Department’s Agency for International Development. IYF also collaborated with many Clinton Foundation programs.

Laureate runs for-profit schools, that came under fire during former President Barack Obama’s administration. Unlike American competitors in the for-profit education industry, about 75 percent of the school operations are located overseas in about a dozen countries. Tuition from its international operations constitutes the organization’s largest single source of revenue, according to the company’s SEC 10-Q filing, a quarterly report for the period ending Sept. 30, 2017.

Laureate has been characterized as a classic “pay-to-play” operation by critics that include the company’s hiring of former heads of state and the leaders of international multinational organizations to assist in overseas operations.

The company came under fire for ties to the Clintons and a relationship with their foundation. Sixty-five members of Congress asked the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Trade Center to probe the Clinton Foundation in July 2016 on corruption charges that included a request to specifically examine the foundation’s relationship with Laureate.

After hiring Bill Clinton, Laureate continued its aggressive recruitment of political heavyweights with its decision in 2013 to add Zoellick to the board.

Interested in packing the company with international figures, Laureate also named former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo its “Presidential Counsellor” in 2015. Zedillo governed Mexico as head of the Mexican political party called the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), that had a monopoly on power for 71 years. The PRI is a full member of the Socialist International.

Laureate’s largest single revenue source comes from Latin America, where the company operates schools in Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama, Peru and Ecuador and Mexico, according to the company’s 10-K quarterly SEC filings. 

Laureate did not issue a press release announcing Zoellick’s resignation, but only reported it to the SEC under an 8-K filing that requires companies to announce “material events” affecting a company. Laureate stated Zoellick “did not express any disagreement with the Company,” in the SEC filing dated Dec. 16, but the company did not state the reasons for his resignation.

TheDCNF contacted Laureate, but did not receive any reply.

Zoellick was richly rewarded for his board membership. He received $225,000 in total compensation in 2016, according to a Laureate SEC filing. 

Zoellick also was awarded 18,558 Class “A” shares in the company on Jan. 31, the day before the company went public.

Laureate’s stock has performed far below its original estimated initial public offering (IPO) price of $21 per share, later adjusted downward before it went public Feb. 1 at a price of $14 to $17 per share. The company experienced a brief breakout on June 19, hitting a year high of $18.51, but continued its falling streak, hitting a low of $10.53 on Nov. 15, according to NASDAQ.

The company in May informed the SEC of the 40 million shares originally issued as an IPO and 5.4 million shares were never issued. They informed the SEC on May 24, 2017, the company “deregistered” 5.4 million shares.

Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts (KKR), a private equity firm, was one of the largest investors in Laureate. KKR received nearly 30 million Laureate shares below the market price, paying $11.90 per share, according to the company’s SEC filings shortly after it went public.

After Zoellick left the World Bank he became the “non-executive chairman” of AllianceBernstein, a global investment management firm that offers research and investment services “to institutional investors, individuals, and private wealth clients in major world markets.”

Zoellick also serves on the boards of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Rolls Royce and AXA, a French insurance firm, among other companies. 

Zoellick joined Laureate’s board in 2013 and also rejoined Goldman Sachs in 2013, this time serving as the chairman of its international advisory board. He previously served as vice chairman of Goldman Sachs.

Zoellick is a Republican and most recently served in a number of roles in former President George W. Bush’s administration, including as a U.S. Trade Representative and as deputy Secretary of State.

He was a close confident of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Zoellick was a signatory to a March 12, 2016 open letter opposing the President Donald Trump’s candidacy. The letter accused Trump of being “fundamentally dishonest.”

His highest profile job, however, was when he became World Bank President in 2007. He replaced Paul Wolfowitz, who rocked the bank in a sex scandal involving a foreign national who also worked at the bank.

Zoellick did not respond to several DCNF inquiries for comment.
Where do I apply for Bill's job--not with Hillary by the way--I mean the one that pays millions and doesn't require me to ahhh you know what with you know who. I do have my standards, though they do be a bit low.
(02-24-2018, 01:12 PM)Jamescrabb++ Wrote: [ -> ]Where do I apply for Bill's job--not with Hillary by the way--.

Hillary might be appealing if you are a female lumberjack.