The Compliance Racket.

CORRUPTION; UNIVERSITY & college employees; UNIVERSITIES & colleges -- Privileges & immunities; HEALTH promotion services in universities & colleges; RESEARCH; LABOR laws; UNIVERSITIES & colleges

The article looks at the emergence of compliance officers on college campuses in the United States. Compliance officers investigate, report on, and oversee the correction of behaviors that fail to comply with the law. At colleges they monitor a variety of regulatory requirements in areas as diverse as health care, scientific research, immigration, labor law, and environmental safety. Critics of compliance officers state that the real benefit of a compliance program is less to ensure obedience to the law than to deflect unwanted attention from an institution's activities, and it is a guarded way of allowing institutions to pursue their own interests.