After wife raps for-profit colleges, Clinton quits chain

Bill Clinton ended his role with a for-profit college system Friday, nearly two weeks after his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, began her second presidential campaign and singled out that industry for criticism.

Bill Clinton's role as honorary chancellor for the college system, Laureate International Universities, was part of a five-year deal that began April 24, 2010, an aide with his office said. The end of the agreement was first reported by Bloomberg Politics, and an aide to Bill Clinton told Bloomberg that the separation had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"Laureate students represent the next generation of leadership," Bill Clinton said in a statement posted on the Laureate website in which he announced his departure. "I have seen a commitment to quality and leadership throughout the Laureate network, and I have enjoyed being a part of it."

The university system -- part of Laureate Education Inc., which according to Bloomberg is the world's largest for-profit college chain -- has been a seven-figure donor to the Clinton Foundation, giving between $1 million and $5 million, according to the foundation's website. Laureate also has made five commitments through the Clinton Global Initiative.

The Clintons recently have faced increased scrutiny over donations made to the foundation while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. Hillary Clinton's nascent campaign also has faced questions about the overlap between the foundation's donors and speech fees or contracts with Bill Clinton during that time.

Laureate is said to have a number of backers from both political parties, including Republican investor Henry Kravis and Democratic billionaire George Soros.

Reviews of Laureate have been mixed, but it is not considered among the worst offenders in the for-profit college industry. President Barack Obama took action against the industry in 2010 as criticism mounted that for-profit colleges encouraged students to take on burdensome levels of debt to pay for subpar educations.

Hillary Clinton denounced the predatory practices of for-profit colleges during her first campaign swing through Iowa.

"We have to sort this out and we have to take on those interests that want to keep the system the way it is because it generates a lot of money and a lot of interest payments for them, and instead get back to basics," she said earlier this month while speaking at a community college in Monticello, Iowa.

Neither Laureate nor Bill Clinton would say how much he was paid. Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure forms in 2012 revealed only that her husband received nonemployee compensation of more than $1,000 from the company that year.

Bill Clinton was hired at a time when the industry was facing pressure from the Obama administration and Tom Harkin, then a senator from Iowa.

Around the same time, the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions began an investigation into the industry.

In his role as an honorary chancellor for Laureate, Bill Clinton went to 19 campuses around the globe and spoke to tens of thousands of students, according to the statement from the university system.

Based in Baltimore, Laureate has focused its expansion abroad, largely in emerging markets, and says it has nearly 1 million students enrolled. Of its 84 institutions, 30 are in South America, and eight are in the United States. Former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo is set to become the company's presidential counselor, following the model set by Clinton in his similar role.

author sees co-mingling

Peter Schweizer, the conservative author of a forthcoming book examining the Clintons' financial dealings, suggests Clinton resigned to avoid a wave of negative publicity.

Bloomberg obtained a chapter of the book describing what Schweizer presents as a "troubling" co-mingling of official State Department business with the private financial affairs of Bill Clinton and a nonprofit run by Laureate's chairman, Douglas Becker.

In his book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, Schweizer writes that after Bill Clinton accepted the position at Laureate in 2010 in exchange for unspecified payment, his wife "made Laureate part of her State Department Global Partnership." The State Department subsequently provided tens of millions of dollars to a nonprofit, the International Youth Foundation, headed by Becker.

Citing the foundation's tax filings, Schweizer writes that while the International Youth Foundation had received government grants (mainly from the U.S. Agency for International Development) as far back as 2001, the grants "exploded since Bill became chancellor of Laureate," accounting for the vast majority of the nonprofit's revenue. In 2010, "government grants accounted for $23 million of its revenue, compared with $5.4 million from other sources. It received $21 million in 2011 and $23 million in 2012." The link between International Youth Foundation and Laureate has not been previously reported, he said.

The Clinton campaign disputed Schweizer's characterization. "This is yet another false allegation in a book that is fast being debunked," said Brian Fallon, a campaign spokesman. "The International Youth Foundation was funded by the Bush administration, well before Hillary Clinton became secretary of state. In fact, the group's USAID funding actually went down in the year that she arrived at the State Department, not up."

An examination of the International Youth Foundation's public filings show that in 2009, the year before Bill Clinton joined Laureate, the nonprofit received 11 grants worth $9 million from the State Department or the affiliated USAID. In 2010, the group received 14 grants worth $15.1 million. In 2011, 13 grants added up to $14.6 million. The next year, those numbers jumped: The nonprofit received 21 grants worth $25.5 million, including a direct grant from the State Department.

In his book, Schweizer noted that Bill Clinton, during the period when his wife was secretary of state from 2009-13, spoke at multiple Laureate campuses. Schweizer wrote that "based on his typical fee scale," the half dozen speaking events Clinton has done annually for Laureate "means perhaps $1 million per year."

In a statement, Laureate spokesman Matthew Yale said, "The politics and motives of the author are obvious and his claims are baseless. We are proud of our association with President Clinton, who shares our commitment to helping young people change their lives through education."

Hillary Clinton's direct ties to the company are more limited. Becker gave $4,600 to her 2008 presidential campaign and $2,000 to her 2000 Senate campaign. The company also was one of the founding donors to the 100,000 Strong Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to expanding Mandarin language study in the United States that Hillary Clinton started.

Laureate plays up its Clinton ties in a big way. Its homepage prominently features a photo of Bill Clinton speaking this month at a new campus in Panama.

The fact that Clinton only signed on for a five-year term was not publicly disclosed when his hire was announced in April 2010 or at any time before Friday.

Information for this article was contributed by Maggie Haberman of The New York Times and by Joshua Green and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 04/26/2015

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