Corruption in academic accreditation

or college to admit foreign students, even though it is necessary to participate in other programs, like federal financial aid. The focus was, and still is, on keeping terrorists, not questionable colleges, out of the higher-education system.

In recruiting Indian students, Tri-Valley discovered what others already knew: That India is ripe for exploiting SEVIS loopholes, in part because of the sheer number of students there who want to come to the United States.

Tri-Valley became very successful very quickly. The university was started with a $5,000 investment in 2008 and approved by the government to admit international students a year later. By 2010, it was bringing in more than $4 million according to government estimates—though if Ms. Su’s claim of 5,000 students and alumni is accurate, the revenue may have been much higher. Ms. Su had upgraded her lifestyle in accordance with the university’s newfound affluence. She purchased a 6,384-square-foot house in December for $1.8-million and made the 15-minute drive to Tri-Valley’s headquarters in a Mercedes-Benz.

Su may well have gotten the idea to start Tri-Valley from her former employer, Herguan University, where she worked as an adjunct faculty member. The two Silicon Valley colleges share many similarities: They are unaccredited, enroll mostly Indian students, and, until recently, allowed students to spend most of their time working outside California.

DHS officials say they are not blind to the existence of other Tri-Valleys, although they would not comment on, or even confirm, current investigations. And they concede that regulations governing foreign-student employment are vulnerable to exploitation. “These areas are ripe for abuse,” says a top administrator with ICE, which monitors 10,300 schools and colleges that grant visa documents. “We look very closely.”

Officials say that the agency is doing the best it can, given its resources and authority. An increase in Sevis fees, the system is entirely self-financed, will support the creation of a new enforcement unit focused solely on school and college violations and allow for the creation of a 60-person team of regionally based liaisons to act as contacts and more closely monitor colleges on the ground.

Within the next couple of years, DHS also hopes to roll out a new version of the Sevis database with greater data-tracking capabilities and fraud-detection features built in. Still, the agency has limited latitude to act, even when it knows of problems. For example, officials have no authority to sanction colleges like Tri-Valley that continue to admit