Consider the case of Laureate Education-a typical example of the Clinton Blur in action. Laureate Education began as part of Sylvan Learning Systems but branched out to become one of the largest for-profit university systems in the world. Founded in Baltimore in 1999, it now comprises a sprawling network of campuses, including six in Saudi Arabia, a dozen in Brazil, three in China, and even one in Cyprus.
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In Brazil alone, there are 130,000 students paying tuition to attend ten Laureate International schools on forty different campuses. Laureate recruits students through telemarketing. The call centers are often on the campus themselves and those making the calls are university students.
The university system spends more than $200 million a year on advertising, including television commercials, online campaigns, and billboards that dot the developing world. In early 2010 Bill signed on as "honorary chancellor" of Laureate.
The title might have been “honorary," but Bill got paid for his services. How much? Bill raked in more than $16 million to be honorary chairman of Laureate from 2010–2015. Coincidentally, Bill would step down from this lucrative role the exact week news reports of the initial edition of this book and its reporting were published.
Clinton would claim his five year contract had simply expired. Bill sparked tremendous excitement when he showed up in 2012 to address throngs of students and faculty at Laureate schools in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, and Mexico City.
He also visited campuses in Germany, Spain, Turkey, Malaysia, Brazil, Peru, and the United States. Bill's face and name have been plastered on Laureate marketing materials and pictures of him have lined the walkways at campuses like Laureate's Bilgi University in Istanbul, Turkey.
The relationship between Laureate chairman Douglas Becker and the Clintons formed in the years before Hillary became secretary of state, when Becker started showing up at Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) events. In 2008 Laureate became a partner with CGI. By 2009 Becker was paying Bill to give speeches at Laureate campuses in Spain, Brazil, and Peru.
Other Clinton friends were soon brought in. Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of housing and urban development during Clinton's presidency, became chairman of Laureate's National Hispanic University advisory board. Cisneros delivered commencement addresses in San Jose, California, where he praised Laureate as a "pioneer in higher education for Hispanics." But Laureate's business practices have faced serious legal scrutiny and criminal investigations in some countries.
In Mexico, Chile, and Turkey, where Laureate operates, for profit universities are actually illegal. Laureate has put money into a struggling nonprofit school, getting positions on the board, then getting the school to hire Laureate for a variety of "services," including computer-advisory services and English courses.
Laureate has also received funds for the use of its trademark. According to Chile's economic crimes unit, Laureate's Chilean schools transferred more than $80 million out of the country between 2011 and 2013.
A national commission found that there were irregularities regarding Laureate's activities. In its financial filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Laureate admitted that the service agreements are a way to “efficiently transfer funds out of the universities in these countries."
Becker, in addition to running Laureate, is also the chairman of the International Youth Foundation (IYF). This nonprofit sister organization (whose offices are less than a mile from Laureate's in Baltimore) runs numerous programs through Laureate, including something called YouthActionNet, which has fellows on Laureate's campuses in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Peru, Chile, and Turkey.
Becker's company announced its YouthActionNet commitment at the CGI annual meeting in 2010. Bill heartily approved: "I am pleased that Laureate International Universities and the International Youth Foundation have partnered on this commitment to empower young social entrepreneurs to take on pressing challenges in their own communities and around the world."
Shortly after Bill became honorary chancellor in April 2010, Hillary made Laureate part of her State Department Global Partnership. In October 2010 the State Department held a gala reception on the twentieth anniversary of IYF's founding.
The featured speaker was Maria Otero, the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, who praised the group for "doing such important work." IYF had already received financial support from USAID before Hillary became secretary of state, going back to 2001. But the amount of its grants has exploded since Bill became chancellor of Laureate.
According to IYF tax filings, in 2010 government grants accounted for $23 million of its revenue, compared to $5.4 million from other sources. It received $21 million in 2011 and $23 million in 2012. In June 2011 IYF joined with the State Department and USAID in holding a Youth Partnerships Employability Conference in Washington.