Bill Clinton made millions from a shady for-profit university

(Image credit: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images)

As Donald Trump fights to keep the details of his Trump University lawsuit secret, connoisseurs of news about presidential candidates entangled in messy relationships with for-profit educational institutions can turn their attention to the Clinton camp.

Per the Clintons' tax returns, Bill Clinton received nearly $16.5 million for his role as honorary chancellor of Laureate Education, a for-profit group which bills itself as the "largest global network of degree-granting higher education institutions." The former president left his position, which he had held since 2010, in the spring of 2015 when Hillary Clinton began criticizing for-profit colleges on the campaign trail.

Critics allege that Laureate's ties to the Clintons and their family foundation gained the university a shield from federal scrutiny while also easing visa applications for foreign students during Hillary Clinton's tenure in the State Department. That charge parallels accusations that foreign governments and major corporations received favors from the Clinton State Department in exchange for supporting the Clinton Foundation.

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Update: A spokesperson for Laureate adds this context: "President Clinton had a five-year term, which was spelled out in his contract. His term had expired" when he left in 2015.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.