DeVry Education Group Inc. will maintain access to federal funding, its main source of revenue, under a deal with regulators that resolved a claim that the for-profit college chain ran advertisements inflating its graduates’ employment success. 
 
 The settlement agreement announced Thursday likely allows the company to avoid the fate of two of its competitors, Corinthian Colleges Inc. and ITT Technical Institute. Those companies... ||||| DeVry University Agrees To Stop Ads Touting Grads' Job Success Without Proof 
 
 Enlarge this image toggle caption J Pat Carter/AP J Pat Carter/AP 
 
 The major for-profit university chain DeVry has agreed to stop making its often-repeated claim: that since 1975, 90 percent of its graduates seeking employment found jobs in their field within six months of graduation. 
 
 That's because of a settlement announced Thursday with the Department of Education. In August 2015, the department requested that DeVry prove that claim, which it has used for years in radio, TV, online and print advertisements. Now, in a statement, the department said "DeVry could not provide evidence to substantiate this claim." 
 
 "Students deserve accurate information about where to invest their time and money, and the law is simple and clear: recruitment claims must be backed up by hard data," U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. said in a statement. 
 
 DeVry, which has at least 55 campuses across the U.S., said that it is "pleased" to have resolved the matter and will "continue to cooperate with the Department." It said that it was asked to provide student-specific data on graduate employment rates since 1975, and that it "lacked such student-specific data for the period from 1975 to October 1980." 
 
 Under the terms of the agreement, as NPR's Eric Westervelt tells our Newscast unit, "DeVry must stop making that claim on any platform and post a notice on its website stating that the claim is unsubstantiated." That notice must remain on the website for a period of two years. "The chain must also submit to greater federal financial oversight," Eric adds. 
 
 The agreement also requires DeVry to post a "letter of credit" to the department of more than $68 million. As The Associated Press reports, the money "can be used as a form of insurance for any liabilities caused by DeVry." 
 
 As the Department of Education writes, "Today's agreement settles only the issue of a single, unsubstantiated claim and does not prohibit the Department from imposing future enforcement actions against DeVry in the event of additional findings." 
 
 Separately, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in January against DeVry over alleged deceptive advertising, as The Two-Way reported. It targeted the same claim as the Department of Education, and an additional one: that "its graduates had 15 percent higher incomes one year after graduation on average than the graduates of all other colleges or universities." 
 
 This is part of a rising tide against misleading and deceptive advertising claims made by the for-profit college industry. As NPR's Anya Kamenetz has reported, there's now a "multi-agency assault mounted by the Obama administration's Department of Education, the Federal Trade Commission, many states and the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was formed after the financial crisis in 2008." 
 
 She adds that "as of last June, 28 for-profit colleges were under investigation, according to a report from the Brookings Institution." ||||| The U.S. Department of Education today announced a settlement agreement with DeVry University (DeVry), a subsidiary of DeVry Education Group Inc., resolving the Department’s charge that the institution used unsubstantiated job placement claims in recruitment and advertising materials. This settlement further enhances the Department’s oversight of DeVry and builds upon the Obama Administration’s commitment to protecting students, safeguarding taxpayer dollars and increasing accountability among postsecondary institutions. 
 
 “Students deserve accurate information about where to invest their time and money, and the law is simple and clear: recruitment claims must be backed up by hard data.” said U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. 
 
 If a postsecondary institution advertises job placement statistics to recruit students, federal law requires that the institution be able to substantiate the truthfulness of such claims. In August 2015, the Department requested that DeVry provide data and other information to substantiate DeVry’s advertised claim that, since 1975, 90 percent of its graduates were employed in their field of study within six months of graduation. After reviewing the information that DeVry provided, Federal Student Aid found that DeVry could not provide evidence to substantiate this claim. 
 
 The Department is also working closely with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in connection with its lawsuit against DeVry which alleges the institution’s advertisements deceived consumers about the job placement rates in graduates’ chosen fields of study, and falsely claimed graduates would earn more than those graduating with bachelor's degrees from other colleges or universities. The Department will continue to support the FTC’s ongoing lawsuit against DeVry, while also continuing its own investigations of the institution. 
 
 Today’s agreement settles only the issue of a single, unsubstantiated claim and does not prohibit the Department from imposing future enforcement actions against DeVry in the event of additional findings. 
 
 “We are grateful to our federal partners at the Federal Trade Commission for their ongoing support in our investigation,” said U.S. Department of Education Chief Enforcement Officer Robert Kaye. “Together, we’ve put an end to the use of an unsubstantiated claim by this institution, and we will continue our efforts to ferret out similar unlawful practices.” 
 
 Effective immediately, DeVry University will be participating in the federal student aid programs only through a provisional program participation agreement. As a result of this settlement, DeVry’s provisional status may last as long as five years. Moreover, DeVry also agreed that its continued participation in Title IV federal student aid programs will be contingent on complying with additional requirements. 
 
 Specifically, the agreement requires DeVry to: 
 
 Cease publishing marketing claims that include the “Since 1975 Representation;” 
 
 Cease making any representations about post-graduation employment rates without possessing and maintaining (1) graduate-specific data to substantiate those representations; and (2) documentation of the methodology used to calculate any claims. DeVry must also certify, and provide an independent certification to the Department, of its compliance with these documentation requirements; 
 
 Post an irrevocable, five-year letter of credit of no less than $68.4 million; 
 
 Prominently disclose, for a period of two years, a notice on its online home page regarding its failure to substantiate the “Since 1975 Representation” and include the same language in new enrollment agreements for a period of five years; and 
 
 Take steps to rid the internet of the “Since 1975 Representation” (both on its own website and on websites not under its direct control). 
 
 The funds from the letter of credit may be drawn in part or in whole by the Department to pay refunds owed to or on behalf of current or former students of DeVry, to provide for transitional costs, including teach-outs, of students enrolled at DeVry in the event of a closure, or to pay institutional liabilities owed to the Department. The letter of credit represents roughly 10 percent of DeVry University’s total Title IV aid revenue for the 2014-15 award year. 
 
 Additionally, DeVry University has been placed on Heightened Cash Monitoring 1, a Tile IV program method of payment that will require the institution to provide documentation of qualifying federal aid expenses before accessing funds. This financial oversight action enables the Department to more closely monitor how the institution handles federal aid dollars. DeVry must also comply with additional notification requirements to the Department. 
 
 Separate from and unrelated to the settlement, DeVry has previously announced that it will no longer require students to agree to mandatory arbitration clauses, allowing students to seek redress of grievances in court and that it will restrict its reliance on all federal sources to 85 percent of revenue, in line with President Obama's 2017 budget proposal. 
 
 The Enforcement Unit, announced in February, collaborates with partner state and federal agencies, in building cases against institutions of higher education that engage in wrongdoing. The Unit includes four groups - Investigations, Borrower Defense, Administrative Actions and Appeals, and Clery - and utilizes a broad set of interventions and tools, including subpoena authority, document demands, interrogatories and interviews to enforce against violations of federal law. 
 
 In the 2014-15 aid year, DeVry Education Group, Inc. enrolled roughly116,500 Title IV aid recipients. Of those, approximately 66,000 attended DeVry University as undergraduate or graduate students. That year, DeVry University received approximately $684 million in federal student aid dollars.
– DeVry University's ads are about to get an overhaul. That's because the school's oft-touted claim that since 1975, 90% of its graduates looking for employment found jobs in their field within six months actually has no basis in fact, according to the Department of Education. The university was asked to back up the assertion last year, but it "could not provide evidence to substantiate this claim," the department announced Thursday. As part of a settlement, DeVry must now abandon the claim, post a notice on its website for two years noting the claim is unproven, and keep at least $68.4 million in reserves in case of any future issues, report NPR and the Wall Street Journal. However, unlike competitors Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute—which recently folded after missteps—DeVry will keep its access to federal funding. DeVry, which has more than 50 campuses nationwide, says it's "pleased" to have the issue cleared up, though it suggests its claim wasn't all that bogus. It says it simply lacked "student-specific data for the period from 1975 to October 1980." The university adds it will "continue communicating its strong student outcomes." DeVry is currently fighting an FTC lawsuit over another of its claims: that its graduates have 15% higher incomes one year after graduation than graduates from all other universities.