US: Report on commercial colleges revised

After reviewing 80 hours of videotapes by its undercover investigators, to remove personally identifiable information, the US Government Accountability Office has revised its hard-hitting report on recruiting practices in for-profit higher education - softening some of the findings but without changing its conclusion that the colleges visited had engaged in deception or fraud - writes Tamar Lewin for The New York Times.

"After the review of the tapes, we chose to issue the revised report to add more precise language and to clarify some aspects of the report," said Chuck Young, a spokesman for the GAO. "But ultimately nothing has changed with the overall message of the report, and nothing has changed with any of our findings."

The report, issued 4 August at hearings on for-profit colleges by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, described undercover investigators' visits to 15 for-profit campuses, where they posed as prospective students and used hidden cameras to record admissions representatives.
Full report on The New York Times site