As President Donald Trump works to reshape America’s colleges and universities, the man he wants overseeing higher education has deep ties to an industry often in the Department of Education’s crosshairs: for-profit colleges.
That person, Nicholas Kent, worked with the preeminent lobbying group for for-profit colleges and was a high-level executive for another that reached a $13 million settlement over claims it had defrauded the federal government’s student aid program.
As under secretary, Kent would oversee the office in charge of billions in federal student aid and that ensures America’s colleges provide a quality education.
Kent’s nomination comes as the administration has sought to shut down much of the Department of Education while using it and other federal education policies to dramatically upend the higher education system. The administration has specifically investigated and frozen billions in funding to multiple Ivy League institutions like Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
The administration and Columbia University just agreed to a $200 million fine to settle accusations that the New York institution had discriminated against its Jewish community following months of pressure and hundreds of millions in halted federal funding. The settlement is supposed to restore that money.
But the shakeup of higher education extends beyond the Ivy League schools as the Trump administration has frozen billions in research funding, throttled the flow of international students, and launched dozens of investigations into private and public colleges.
For-profits schools, though, have largely been spared and Trump has suggested redirecting billions from Ivy League universities to trade schools.
The Department of Education declined to make Kent available for an interview, but Education Secretary Linda McMahon praised him as a “natural leader” whose experience and concern for students “make him the ideal selection for under secretary of education.”
“Nicholas’ technical expertise and vast experience in higher education, especially his work on accreditation and accountability reforms, will be a great benefit to current and aspiring postsecondary students, faculty, and staff,” she said in a statement to USA TODAY.
While awaiting Senate approval, Kent is working on other policies for the Department of Education, including the administration’s school choice initiatives at the K-12 level.
Backers of the administration’s pick say Kent would bring a deep knowledge of higher education policy and fairness to the role. And while higher education advocacy groups have pushed back on the department’s attacks on colleges, they have embraced Kent.
The American Council on Education, the largest trade group of colleges, endorsed him in a March letter to the Senate’s education committee. Other supporters include trade groups for community colleges, private universities and veteran organizations.
But critics want to know more about his ties to Education Affiliates, the for-profit college company that paid millions to settle claims of fraud without a determination of liability. They also question his time at Career Education Colleges and Universities, the for-profit trade group that pushed rolling back federal regulations directed at proprietary universities, as for-profit schools are often called. Others questioned what he accomplished while working in Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration as deputy secretary of education in Virginia.
Those worried about his nomination say Kent could have addressed their concerns, but the Senate committee advanced his nomination and six others without a hearing in a 12-11 vote. The previous under secretary, James Kvaal, received a committee hearing before the Senate confirmed him, though none of the nine preceding under secretaries did.
“With decades of experience in higher education, Mr. Kent will bring proven expertise and leadership to the Department of Education,” said Stephen Lewerenz, the education committee’s Republican spokesperson. “We look forward to his nomination moving through the full Senate.”
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, the ranking member of the committee voted against Kent’s nomination saying, “we should not be confirming a former lobbyist who represented for-profit colleges to oversee higher education.”
The final vote on Kent is not yet scheduled, and Republicans hold a majority, making his confirmation likely.
Company paid $13 million to settle ‘numerous allegations of predatory conduct’
Kent earned his undergraduate degree in 2005 at West Virginia Wesleyan College, a private school with ties to the United Methodist Church.
He launched his higher education career early by taking college courses while in high school, according to details shared about his high school and college life by Education Department spokesperson Madison Biedermann. He also was a first-generation student who received a Pell Grant, an award geared toward low-income students.
After graduating, he spent two years working for the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools, according to his LinkedIn page listing his work history. It’s a smaller player in the accreditation space that approves many for-profit schools that offer bachelor’s degrees and shorter programs for jobs like a licensed practical nurse, massage therapist or dental hygienist.
In 2008, he joined Education Affiliates, and in 2009 he started a master’s program at George Washington University with a concentration in higher education administration.
By this time, Dorothy Thomas had been at Education Affiliates for years and was on the road to blowing the whistle on the gaming of student aid she would see.
Thomas, who is speaking for the first time about her experience to USA TODAY, was one of the company’s original hires in 2005. Back then, the Maryland-based company owned 10 for-profit trade schools.
The company didn’t stay small long. Thomas was on the road often, zig-zagging from Florida, Maryland, Alabama, Pennsylvania and other states trying to ensure the schools complied with the government’s complicated guidelines to receive student aid.
As the company grew, she said she noticed college staff overstated how long students stayed in their classes, even beyond their graduation, and instead pocketed the federal funding. In 2013, she filed a lawsuit against the company in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee against Education Affiliates and its parent company. By then, it had 53 campuses and more than 60,000 students. The suit alleged, among other things, that the company had deliberately gamed the federal student aid system.
Her whistleblower suit mentioned a case involving a campus in Essington, Pennsylvania where Thomas found 30 cases in an audit of 266 students that would require the for-profit company to return federal funds to the government.
Of those 30, 11 had already graduated and 16 had dropped out, but the company still marked them as active students and received federal aid. (The remaining three were ineligible for different reasons.)
She learned that staff were directing students to acquire fraudulent high school diplomas from the internet to fake their eligibility to take college classes and receive financial aid.
Thomas brought these concerns and others to her superiors, including the then-CEO, but she was met with “near universal hostility,” according to her lawsuit. The suit went on to say executives “attempted at all costs to minimize the results thereof by blatantly changing the results, doctoring actual documents in student files, or simply refusing to return and refund funding to the Department of Education.”
Thomas said she was fired in 2012 after the company had learned she had brought her complaints to the Education Department. But it wasn’t just Thomas who raised concerns.
Her whistleblower suit would join four others against the company covering a span from 2005 to 2013. The resulting investigation included five different state attorneys general offices across the U.S., the Education Department and the FBI. The plaintiffs were mostly former employees, but some included students who said they were fraudulently enrolled.
Though the specifics of the complaints varied, most painted the company as focused on growth rather than student success. Several of the suits specifically alleged the company’s leadership knew that staff directed students to obtain phony diplomas or enrolled people who were academically ineligible. Thomas’ suit, for example, referenced a PowerPoint from leadership that directed campuses to shred student attendance records.
At the same time, Kent was rising in the ranks at Education Affiliates. He started as an accreditation specialist but over seven years had risen to vice president of legislative and regulatory affairs, a position he held for roughly three years.
Thomas did not work with Kent directly. Still, she was flabbergasted to see the administration considering someone from Education Affiliates’ leadership for a high-ranking government position given he worked for the company during a time it was accused of directing students to fake diplomas and gaming financial aid.
“Am I happy to see him as the under secretary nominee? No, no,” she said.
In 2015, Rod J. Rosenstein, then-U.S Attorney for Maryland who would go on to be deputy attorney general for the first Trump administration, announced the $13 million settlement. Ted Mitchell, then under secretary of the Education Department, said at the time the settled cases included “numerous allegations of predatory conduct that victimized students and bilked taxpayers.”
Years later, Mitchell as president of the American Council on Education signed a letter endorsing Kent. He declined to answer questions about the 2015 statement. But another senior leader of the group, Jon Fansmith said, “The ACE letter of support is a sincere recommendation based on Ted’s and ACE’s experience over a number of years of working with Mr. Kent in a variety of professional roles.”
Kent’s time with the for-profit group is listed on his LinkedIn page, but it was not included in the Education Department’s announcement about his nomination.
Ben DeGweck, general counsel for Education Affiliates, confirmed that Kent had been a vice president with the company and that he was “never involved in any part of the allegations, nor the internal or external discussions related to the settlement, which is now more than a decade old matter.”
“His focus while at Education Affiliates was on external regulatory and legislative matters related to higher education,” DeGweck said in a statement to USA TODAY.
The company also supports his nomination, saying it is “confident he will bring an ethical and fair approach to all institutions of higher education, regardless of sector.”
The Education Department declined to answer USA TODAY’s questions about Kent’s time at Education Affiliates. Instead, in a statement shared by Bindermann the agency said Kent’s 20-plus years of experience in the higher education space gave him a “well-rounded and pragmatic understanding of the education landscape.”
Thomas was skeptical of the company’s statement based on her experience working at the company and given Kent was part of the corporate team.
And Christopher Madaio, a former chief of an investigative unit within Education Department, said in his experience investigating for-profit colleges, pressure to grow profits often comes from those in leadership.
Madaio is now a senior adviser for the Institute of College Access and Success, a group which sent a letter to the Senate education committee alongside teachers’ unions and others pushing for a public hearing on Kent’s nomination.
He said the company’s response is appreciated, but he said he believes “there is value to putting people who seek this type of important position under oath and asking them questions about their experience, prior employers, and principles.”
A defender of for-profit colleges
Kent spent less than a year working at Washington, D.C.’s public school system before starting consulting work through the Dulles Advisory Group. In a public filing, Kent wrote that he was the “sole managing director” and it was “used only as a pass-through entity for funds received for consulting income.” He added the company had been dormant since 2017.
That was when Kent started working for Career Education Colleges and Universities.
The group’s CEO, Jason Altmire, said he understood Kent wasn’t involved in the Education Affiliates settlement and that the company had admitted no wrongdoing. He added that Kent’s “impeccable character” meant he was not worried about his past employment.
At that for-profit trade group, Kent earned a reputation as an avid critic of regulation of for-profit schools, especially toward Biden administration policies.
He often spoke against the 90/10 rule, a regulation that requires for-profit colleges receive at least 10% of their income from sources other than the federal government. Previously, funding from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes the G.I. Bill, had counted toward the 10% side. Veteran advocacy groups argued that loophole gave for-profit colleges an incentive to aggressively recruit students paying with the G.I. Bill as a counterbalance to students paying only with federal financial aid.
In 2021, Congress voted to include all forms of federal funding on the 90% side of the rule, not just money from the Education Department as part of a pandemic relief package. CECU, and sometimes Kent directly, had initially argued against that effort, saying the move would limit veterans’ access to higher education. Still, representatives for the for-profit sector participated in the federal rulemaking process and CECU abstained from filing a challenge against the final rule.
Altmire praised the Trump administration’s recent tweak to the rule allowing universities to count some unaccredited programs toward the non-federal funding side. He said the rule does a poor job of measuring quality, but that the group appreciated “the Department’s efforts to at least apply it in a more evenhanded way for as long as it remains in statute.”
He told USA TODAY Kent was what the Education Department needed during a transitional time in higher education. He added that Kent had deep policy knowledge and “is not driven by partisanship and brings a fair and unbiased perspective to the role.”
Unlike McMahon, who is newer to the often byzantine world of higher education policy, Kent knows his way around. That is the assessment of Kevin Kinser, a Pennsylvania State University professor, who has long studied the for-profit sector and college accreditation.
He said Kent likely understands the “ways that the higher education universe is dependent on the federal government for its viability,” and how the administration could use that reliance to bend universities to its will.
As for what Kent might do? Kinser said he might expect a drive for policies that would have colleges prioritize preparing students for the workforce. That stance would be in contrast to a traditional view of higher education that holds a degree is about helping people be engaged members of society in addition to getting a job.
Kinser also said Kent’s time working with an accreditor is likely to be useful as Trump on the campaign trail had declared college accreditation his “secret weapon” to take back universities from the “radical left.” The administration has already pressured Columbia’s and Harvard’s accreditors to take action against the universities in response to its findings that they violated the rights of Jewish students. Trump also has signed an executive order that aims to make it easier for universities to switch accreditors and would ramp up efforts to recognize new ones.
Kent has also won the support of some veterans groups focused on higher education and some trade groups, including the American Association of Community Colleges, which praised his knowledge of the department’s policy making process.
Others, such as Ohio University emeritus professor Richard Vedder, are unconcerned about Kent’s ties to the for-profit industry. Vedder has studied for-profits and is the author of “Let Colleges Fail: The Power of Creative Destruction in Higher Education.”
Though he would not call himself an advocate for proprietary schools, he said the federal government and some Democratic members of Congress have long been unfairly critical of the for-profit industry.
But Vedder said that every sector of higher education has “bad apples.” And he added that all types of higher ed are subject to some Education Department regulations. Why should working at a for-profit disqualify someone from a top government post, he asked. It was important, he said, to have people who are familiar with higher education in that role.
Vedder thought someone like Kent might push to reconfigure the 90/10 rule. He also questioned if he would push for more limits on federal student lending or even advocate to get the government out of that market altogether.
Holding higher ed accountable or MAGA agenda to disrupt?
In September 2023, Kent hung up his policy hat and moved into the public sector as a member of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration.
A Republican, Youngkin on his first day in office signed an executive order to end the use of “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory,” in K-12 public schools. In 2024, his administration reviewed the curriculum for courses about race and diversity at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University. The universities subsequently dropped the courses.
Youngkin’s administration also made headlines that year for signing a Democratic-sponsored bill ending the use of legacy admissions at Virginia’s public schools. That cause is often associated with higher education access advocates who say the practice favors wealthy students.
Kent’s departing message to the Commonwealth focused on other accomplishments. The two paragraph email, which was obtained by USA TODAY, touted “reducing costs” while advocating for free speech and accountability at Virginia’s colleges. He added he was “especially proud” of providing “data to make more informed decisions.”
That appears to be a reference to the “Virginia higher education planning guide and college outcomes,” a tool with data like college graduation rates and student demographics. Much of that data was already available via the state organization that oversees higher education institutions in the state.
It’s unclear what Kent’s legacy in Virginia will be long term.
Of the lawmakers who responded to USA TODAY’s media inquiries, a Republican and two Democrats told USA TODAY they didn’t have much or any experience working with Kent directly in his roughly year and a half within the governor’s office.
But the chair of the Virginia Senate’s education committee, Democrat Ghazala Hashmi, said Kent’s nomination raised “significant concerns.” Hashmi, who is also the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s lieutenant governor, pointed to his work with CECU to limit regulations for for-profit colleges and said in Virginia he had “hoped to destabilize accreditation policies for colleges and universities,” but she did “not allow his efforts to go far.”
“Kent’s stance aligns with a broader MAGA agenda to dismantle consumer protections and accountability measures and to undermine the quality of higher education,” Hashmi said.
In contrast, a trade group of private universities in Virginia said he was vital to “expanding and strengthening student aid programs.”
Youngkin praised Kent’s work, saying in a statement shared by the Education Department that he “strengthened the management of our higher education institutions, increasing transparency to hold them accountable to parents and students.” The governor’s office did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment about Kent’s accomplishments in the state.
Regardless of his future, Kent is already notable for signing up for a top job at an agency the president doesn’t want to exist. Chris Quintana is an investigative reporter at USA TODAY. He can be reached at cquintana@usatoday.com or via Signal at 202-308-9021. He is on X at @CQuintanaDC
