Melinda Gates Steps Down From Washington Post/Kaplan University Board

I guess the NY Times expose on the fraud that is the Washington Post/Kaplan company got to Ms. Gates.

Here is how the Washington Post covered her resignation:

Melinda French Gates, philanthropist and wife of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, has resigned from the Washington Post Co. board of directors, the company announced Friday.

Gates, a former Microsoft manager who runs the multibillion-dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation with her husband, had joined the board in 2004.

She did not give a reason for stepping down. A family spokesman said she was spending more time than before working and traveling for the foundation.

The Post board's chairman, Donald E. Graham, said it is "sad at losing her."

The Post's Kaplan education unit has come under harsh scrutiny in news reports quoting former Kaplan employees who said that they had been instructed to use the Gates name to persuade students to take classes at the company.

Gates said in a statement released by The Post that she has "been impressed with The Washington Post Company's work with Kaplan, whose new approaches to education are allowing students opportunities that would otherwise not be possible."

She also said the "mission" of The Post "remains as vital today as at any time in its history."

Gates and her husband are close to Warren E. Buffett, whose Berkshire Hathaway company owns about 24 percent of the Post Co. Buffett has pledged to donate much of his fortune to the Gates Foundation.

The Post's board, which includes Buffett, now has 11 members.

It's a shame Gates wasn't honest about the reason she was stepping down.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the Times expose was the reason.

She could have done the education reform movement some good by actually criticizing the Post/Kaplan Company for their fraudulent activities stealing money from students and taxpayers.

But to be honest, it would probably be difficult for Gates to do that.

The nexus between for-profit education companies and the education reform movement has never been more apparent than when Chancellor Klein jumped ship at the NYCDOE to head up Rupert Murdoch's new online for-profit education company this week.

Geoffrey Canada at the Harlem Children's Zone has his own connections to for-profit education companies, having taken $25 million in cash payments from Goldman Sachs, part owner the Art Institutes.

There is a lot of money to be made from the suckers out there and people like Gates, Klein, Canada, Buffet, et al. all know that.

That's why they don't do anything about the kind of fraudulent activity that the Post/Kaplan Company engages in.

In fact, not only don't they do anything about the fraudulent activity, they're not even willing to publicly criticize it.

But I guess it's hard to do that when they're making money off of it themselves.