May, 2020
Washington – Dan Moldea's new book, Money, Politics, and Corruption in U.S. Higher Education: The Stories of Whistleblowers, is now available both on Kindle and in print.
I am among those he interviewed.
What I especially like about the book are the intriguing stories of the other whistleblowers, and how Dan Moldea in his epilogue shows their relevance to current events and the coronavirus pandemic. For-profit colleges are elbowing their way into line for pandemic relief, despite their miserable record over the past two decades. The research programs of the USDA, often carried out in conjunction with land-grant higher education institutions, have failed to ask the right questions about epidemics and the vulnerability of our essential food chain.
Whistleblowers Rodney Lipscomb and James Keen were cast aside but now have a voice again. They are assisted with vigor by the incomparable David Halperin and by Louis Clark, the long-time leader of the Government Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organization and much-respected Washington fixture in the struggle for probity.
My motivation to participate is to improve public awareness about the world of student-loan finance. Several years ago I went to court against nine student-loan lenders to shed light on the industry, a creature of the federal government. An informed citizenry will make better decisions about whom they vote into power to run the government and what they expect of administrative officials.
Another reason is to impress upon those tempted to defraud the government that there may be a price to pay for such action. These days, the price of getting caught seems increasingly just a cost of doing business. And the chances of getting caught are ever-fewer, what with the overt hostility of the Trump Administration to inspectors-general and increased retaliation against whistleblowers.
The book will be an addition to the history of the federal Higher Education Act. Observations of events, over four decades, provide original source material to offer a counterpoint to more conventional accounts that leave out the shadier side of federal higher education history. My conclusions in the interview are those of a principal participant. Scenes in Congress, in judges' chambers, and in courtrooms are an essential part of that record.
Dan Moldea has another fine book to add to his long list of notable, definitive, and provocative works.
