Feds Deny For-Profit College's Request to Turn Nonprofit

The government is accusing a for-profit college chain of trying to evade regulations by turning into a nonprofit.

The Department of Education denied the application of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, or CEHE, a Utah-based for-profit college chain with roughly 12,000 students, to convert into a nonprofit school, which in some cases aren’t subjected to the same types of scrutiny as for-profit colleges for the purposes of federal financial aid funding. In a letter to the company’s chief executive released Thursday, department officials said the school didn’t meet the requirements for a nonprofit institution because, among other reasons, the flow of federal financial aid funds to the school benefits its owner.