Issa’s First Oversight Target: GAO Hatchet Job on For-profit Education

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Big Government:


A bipartisan group of six Congressional lawmakers asked Wednesday the Government Accountability Office to reexamine its report on the for-profit education industry. The agency sent undercover applicants to some of these schools. The undercover investigators claim to have been misled on costs, job placement and future earnings.

In a letter to GAO comptroller Gene Dodaro, California Rep. Darrell Issa lectured the congressional watchdog on its charge to provide objective, factual and nonideological reports. In this instance, the incoming chairman of the House oversight committee said, “GAO has not met its own high standards.”

After releasing in August a sensational report on the alleged abuses within the career college community, GAO acknowledged earlier this month it had heavily revised portions of its findings, changing wrongfully attributed comments and lessening its charges of deception.
Issa wants to know if the GAO has investigated the failings in its initial report and if its office of general counsel had concluded the revised report accurately reflects the analysis contained therein.

A comparison of the modified and original versions revealed at least 13 key passages of the report had been altered.
One vignette originally read the “admissions representative did not disclose the graduate rate after being directly asked.” It was later modified to say “the college’s Web site did not provide the graduation rate.”