As the Industry's Stocks Decline, Brian Moran's Still Lobbying Hard for For-Profit Colleges

I recently tweeted about how the for-profit college industry was taking a major hit on the stock market. The industry's stocks were decreasing because there were a lot of rumors about a possible move by the federal government to decrease the amount of funding that these colleges could receive from the federal government. The biggest change resulting from legislation introduced by Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Tom Harkin is the closing of a loophole that allows for-profit colleges to avoid counting money coming from the military as federal funding.

Closing that loophole would be a huge hit to the for-profit colleges because colleges lose certain types of funding if they receive over 90 percent of their funding from federal resources. The decline in stock prices show that this could be devastating because investors realize for-profit colleges depend on that loophole to make money and therefore spend a lot of resources marketing to the military.

Now this topic clearly will be of interest to anyone who cares about education issues, but it also could have a direct impact on Virginia politics. That's because Brian Moran is the chief lobbyist for the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU). As a result, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Virginia be forced to be devoting a lot of his time and energy to defeating the bill introduced by two of the highest ranking Democrats in the US Senate. It already appears as though this is gaining attention because Ben Tribbett is reporting that "Brian is on the road in Chicago today" campaigning against the legislation.

What makes Ben's observation even more interesting is that it comes in the middle of a post talking about the APSCU hiring a new president -- a position that Brian Moran had been filling on an interim period after his buddy Harris Miller resigned in disgrace. While Brian was passed over for having the job permanently, he will be going back to his old position as Executive Vice President for Government Relations (which is a fancy title for chief lobbyist). This is very telling because even industry insiders are saying that "APSCU will maintain Democratic street cred in its leadership by retaining Brian Moran." They use Moran's position as DPVA Chairman to highlight how the organization still has Democrats in leadership positions.

In other words, Brian Moran's position with the DPVA is giving an organization "Democratic street cred" at a time when it's lobbying against legislation introduce by two senior Democrats. As we're already trying to fight off the GOP's efforts to privatize education, it's simply not good that our state's Democratic chairman is now being used in a way that helps advance the agenda of Republicans and big corporate interests.

This also goes well beyond Moran simply lobbying against this one piece of legislation. After Bob McDonnell delivered his State of the Commonwealth address, for instance, most Democrats went after him for essentially launching an attack on public education. Brian Moran followed most of his fellow Democrats and released a statement criticizing McDonnell, but it seemed to actually draw more attention to his day job than the points he was trying to make.

I raised this point at the time because I have literally spent years as a community organizer trying to gain support for stronger public schools and I don't like seeing our cause hurt due to the DPVA Chairman's day job. Those concerns are only going to get worse now that he's involved in a nationwide campaign to save his industry's stock prices by defeating the legislation introduced in the Senate.