According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama has announced a revolution in higher education: It's going to make sure that fake for-profit institutions of higher ed are no longer skipping town with students' tuition money. Apparently, an overwhelmed Department of Postsecondary Education has been unable to adequately regulate private colleges in the state, allowing phony schools to set up shop in the great state of the Southern Longleaf Pine and sell degrees willy-nilly. The new safeguards are overwhelmingly brilliant:
Proving that they're not diploma mills will mean doing things they've never had to do before such as producing audited financial statements, federal and state tax returns, requiring owners to have good reputations and adopting a definition of academic fraud.
However did they think of all these great ideas? To Alabama's credit, the Associated Press gives a slightly clearer (and less guffaw-inducing) take on the situation. And perhaps we should give the poor Department of Postsecondary Education a break since, according to the Montgomery Advertiser, it has only a "two and a half-person staff."
...What is a half-person?
