Whistleblower lawsuit claiming Academy of Art fraud moves forward

A whistleblower lawsuit by four ex-Academy of Art University student recruiters filed in 2009 gets the Chronicle’s attention today now that a judge ruled last month that it can proceed. It claims that the ubiquitous San Francisco art school defrauded the government out of millions of dollars in financial aid by using illegal tactics to get students to apply. The college, which has drawn fire for years as being as much a real estate enterprise as an educational institution, is claiming what it did was OK under a legal loophole. Chronicle