The for-profit college industry gets about $32 billion of its approximately $35 billion annual revenue from federal financial aid. Fifteen of the largest for-profits get 86 percent of their money from federal student aid programs -- such as Pell grants, student loans, and the G.I. Bill. Yet every time someone proposes making their schools more accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with our money, these corporations bristle, hire ever-more expensive lobbyists, put higher volumes of misleading ads on TV, and increase their campaign contributions to influence Congress. Their latest assault came Wednesday, within minutes of the announcement of new legislation from Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) that would ensure your tax dollars are spent on educating and training students, rather than being wasted on advertising, marketing and recruiting.
An existing law bans colleges from using your tax dollars for lobbying, but it's difficult to enforce. The new legislation would be easier to monitor, because for-profit colleges now actually spend more on ads and recruiting than they earn from sources other than federal aid. In fiscal year 2009, the biggest for-profits spent $3.7 billion dollars, or 23 percent of their budgets, on advertising, marketing and recruitment. One major for-profit, Bridgepoint, in 2009 spent more than $2000 per student on recruiting and only $700 for each student on instruction.
The huge amounts of money that for-profit colleges spend on seeking new students is troubling not only because it diverts money from education. It is excessive, far more than marketing expenditures in other business sectors (typically 4-12 percent of sales) or for nonprofit colleges (an average of one-half of one percent of revenues). It's also worrisome because, as federal, state, and media investigations have found, many for-profit schools have used these funds to engage in recruiting practices that are extremely coercive and deceptive -- that exploit vulnerabilities of prospective students and that mislead students about essential issues, like the value of their degrees and credits, and the real costs they will face. The U.S. Justice Department and half a dozen states have sued Education Management Corp., owner of the Art Institutes and other for-profits, for fraud, alleging the company paid its recruiters based on the number of students signed up, in violation of federal rules. (EDMC denies these claims.) Twenty-three state attorneys general are jointly investigating the industry for fraud.
Recently, the organization Student Veterans of America closed its chapters at 40 for-profit colleges after finding out that they were merely fronts, with no student members, used as a scam by the industry to market their schools as "veteran friendly" -- one of many examples of the for-profits misleading our veterans and active-duty military. Senator Hagan noted her concern, in particular, about this critical group of Americans:
I am especially troubled by the tactics some for-profits have employed in targeting active duty servicemen and women and their families. North Carolina has one of the largest populations of active duty service members and veterans in the country, and each of these courageous men and women deserves access to a quality education. This legislation takes the most significant action yet to protect students, active duty military, veterans and their families from deceptive recruiting practices by some for-profit colleges.
It is clearly another attempt by some policy makers to try and put private-sector colleges and universities out of business. It also reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the students we serve and the public service we provide.
Meanwhile, Apollo Group, the University of Phoenix owner, attacked Harkin and Hagan for offering "misleading rhetoric." The Senators had singled out Apollo for employing more than 8,000 recruiters in 2010. Advertising Age recognized Apollo as one of the top 100 spenders on U.S. advertising in 2009 -- $377 million, more than Apple. But instead of thanking Senators Harkin and Hagan for authorizing -- and taxpayers for providing -- most of the money to pay for these ads (and for sponsorships of everything from New Yorker magazine education panels to Good magazine's education website), Apollo, too, lashed out. (Apollo may be in a bad mood because, as it disclosed on Thursday, the SEC is investigating the company regarding insider trading; Apollo said it would cooperate with the SEC.)
For-profit colleges, many marked by low-quality programs and sky-high prices, as well as deceptive recruiting, have 13 percent of U.S. students but nearly 50 percent of student loan defaults. Recent data show that four-year students at for-profit colleges graduate less than half as often as other students. Many of the biggest actors in this sector systematically ruin students' lives at taxpayer expense. It's long past time for them to stop acting so entitled to our money.
The original version of this article about on Republic Report.
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DC have long known of it
but to me, the rot goes far deeper
School Ed isnt a federal or even a state thing - its parochial - rich parish - good school funding
seems very repressive to me.
Private= private good
You don't need math to figure this out. Common sense should be enough. Too bad it isn't.
Just look at the results of spreading the education wealth. Almost insurmountable student loan debt and declining public school systems. I received my education in public schools after high school and am much better for having had the opportunity. My parents were strict Catholics so I didn't have the opportunity to pursue other educational choices until age 18.