First an Assistant Attorney General for the Maryland Attorney General, Madaio has fixated on litigation against education businesses.

1.     Madaio has devoted “significant energy” towards filing numerous lawsuits against career colleges:

“Madaio notes that DeVos again failed to limit such relief to AACS member schools and again failed to follow the notice-and-comment procedures of federal rulemaking. He says the data that DeVos put on hold is critical to the work by regulators in calculating the debt-to-earnings rates, as the rule requires.

“By refusing to provide Draft GE Completers Lists to institutions as required by the rule, the department has further upended the Gainful Employment administrative scheme,” the complaint states. Madaio and his fellow attorneys general note that they devote significant energy toward bringing enforcement actions against for-profit schools, from Corinthian Colleges to ITT Educational Services. “The investigations leading to many of these actions demonstrated that many for-profit educational institution shave deliberately targeted low-income and minority residents with deceptive information about their programs and enrolled students in programs that were unlikely to lead to employment that would allow graduates to repay the high cost of tuition,” the complaint states. “As a result, low-income and minority residents are often the primary victims of conduct that the rule was designed to prevent. “The department’s illegal delays and refusal to enforce the rule harm current and prospective students by depriving them of adequate information to make informed choices about enrolling in educational programs,” the complaint continues. “Were students given full and complete information about the costs, benefits (or lack thereof), and potential for the program to be ineligible for Title IV loans, many students would choose not to enroll in programs that saddle them with massive debt burdens and limited employment prospects. Instead, such students would choose to enroll in other educational programs that make more economic sense, including, in some cases, programs at state-funded institutions of higher education.” (Parentheses in original.) Madaio is joined in the complaint by the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.” (Source)

Madaio has shown repeatedly that he has an ideological opposition to career colleges. Outside of career colleges, there was very little he ligated on.

2. He took the usual step of testifying before Congress ona regulatory issue which is outside his expertise.

Congresswoman Katie Hill: Mr. Madaio, can you please explain what the gainful employment rule is, just very briefly, and what it was designed  to do and the people that it might benefit?

Mr. Madaio: Yes. The gainful employment rule, first, I want to emphasize, it's designed because the Higher Education Act says that for-profit schools have to have programs that lead to gainful employment, for-profit schools and other certificate

programs at publics and nonprofits, as the chairman mentioned. So that's what the HEA says. That's why all for-profit programs fall under the gainful employment rule. It's designed to protect students from going into a bad program in the first place, instead of only helping them afterwards. And I should point out one point, that since the failures, it's been calculated that 350,000 students took on $7.5 billion in student loan debt from programs that have failed the metric. (source)

3.     Advocated for Aggressive Anti-Career College Legislation in the State of Maryland.

Apart from his responsibility of litigation, he took the extra step regarding passing "House Bill 469":

“The Consumer Protection Division of the Office of the Attorney General supports House Bill 469, sponsored by Delegates Hettleman, Acevero, Bridges, Crosby, Forbes, J. Lewis, Lopez, Mclntosh, Metzgar, Solomon, Valentino-Smith, Wells, and P. Young, because it protects Maryland students at institutions of postsecondary education by putting structures in place to prevent students from being harmed by disorderly school closures. A disorderly closure is an immediate and abrupt closure of the entire school (or a campus or program of study offered by the school) and is defined in the bill as a closure where: (a) students are not given enough time to finish the program; and, (b) the school fails to arrange any agreements with other schools that agree to accept the credits students earned, which would allow the students to finish on their expected graduation date. It is the worst way that a school can close and primarily happens at for-profit institutions where the owners or shareholders attempt to extract as much capital as possible when closure is unavoidable. Good actors who need to close should and can do so in a responsible way that gives current students enough notice to either finish the program or transfer to a quality school that is ready and willing to help them. Some examples of large schools that abruptly closed in recent years are Brightwood College (three Maryland campuses), ITT Technical Institute (two Maryland campuses), Art Institute (online Maryland students), and Argosy University (online Maryland students). In just those four schools, approximately 2,000 Marylanders had their studies interrupted and had to search for a transfer option without any assistance from their school.” (Source)

Madaio ran the legal department at prominent anti-Career Colleges group that was under scrutiny from Federal investigators.

Christopher Madaio previously worked at the left-wing group Veterans For Education Success. Veterans for Education Success is headed by Carrie Wofford, who is a political staffer that previously worked for liberal Senators Harry Reid and Tom Harkin, as well as in the Clinton Administration. As a vice president at Veterans for Education Success, Christopher Madaio said that career colleges would take advantage of Veterans and steal GI Bill money from them:

“According to Chistopher Madaio, vice president for legal affairs at Veterans Education Success, for-profit colleges often seek out veterans because of their GI money — federal dollars from the Post 9/11 GI Bill that funds the full cost of a veteran’s undergraduate education at a public, in-state university or a significant portion of their education at a private university— and other federal and state benefits they receive. “Because of their status as a veteran, they target them with lies and other deceptions that, of course, turn out to be untrue later,” Madaio said. “We try to let veterans know what options they have. Unfortunately, there are only a few, if any.” (Source)

Further, during his time at VES, the group failed to fully cooperate with an Veterans Affair Office of the Inspector General investigation into VES allegedly paying the husband of a senior ranking VA official that VES was attempting to influence.

(Source)

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