Representative Tom Sannicandro joined his House colleagues Wednesday in passing a bill that protects students who enroll in for-profit occupational schools by expanding oversight of the industry, which has seen exponential growth in enrollment and profits in the last several years.
Sen. Dick Durbin [D-Ill.] recently proposed a bill that would dramatically change the way federal money can be allocated to for-profit colleges. Currently, for-profits are bound by what’s known as the “90-10 rule,” which says that 10 percent of for-profit college and universities’ revenues must come from sources outside of federal student aid. But G.I. Bill benefits can be counted towards the 10 percent, making them a lucrative source of revenue for the for-profits.
A little-known California law has dealt a blow to nearly half of the for-profit college campuses in the state, barring them from offering students a coveted Cal Grant this year.
It hasn’t gotten much attention on the campaign trail, but President Obama and Republican front-runner Mitt Romney are sharply divided over one of the most controversial issues in higher education today — the growth of for-profit colleges.
For-profit colleges and universities represent the fastest-growing but also most controversial sector of private higher education in the United States. Universities like Phoenix, DeVry and Kaplan have helped turn the for-profit sector into a massive revenue generator and the engine for higher education growth. From 1998 to 2008, for-profit enrolment grew by 225%.
Last year, the Obama administration vowed to stop for-profit colleges from luring students with false promises. In an opening volley that shook the $30 billion industry, officials proposed new restrictions to cut off the huge flow of federal aid to unfit programs.
Another week, another transaction involving a for-profit online college. The latest: A private-equity group is buying Northcentral University, an all-online institution founded in 1996 and now...
But the for-profit college industry, currently under investigation by a bipartisan group of 23 state attorneys general for fraudulent practices and shoddy programs, is accustomed to earning billions without any accountability. So they fight every reform tooth and nail, and they often get their way, because they back up their expensive lobbyists with piles of campaign cash.
Rasmussen College is a relatively small fish that prefers small ponds. That may be why the for-profit chain is sitting pretty compared to many of its higher-profile peers.
For-profit colleges like ITT, DeVry, Kaplan, and the Art Institutes — sometimes called subprime schools because they leave many students deep in debt while taking billions of dollars from taxpayers — continue an expensive lobbying push to influence Congress and avoid accountability. Republic Report has received a 2011 draft strategy memo by the biggest for-profit college trade association, APSCU, outlining a plan to keep taxpayer money flowing to poorly-performing schools and to derail investigations of fraudulent activity.
Many for-profit colleges also still enroll students without diplomas, and the new regulation has caused concern, said Steve Gunderson, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.
Laureate Education Inc, a for-profit higher education provider that boasts former U.S. President Bill Clinton as honorary chancellor, is planning to launch an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
It's also because the newly expanded Post 9/11 G.I. Bill will pay colleges of all types around $9 billion this year to educate nearly 600,000 veterans, and virtually every school wants to expand its slice of that pie.
From 2001-2 to 2009-10, the proportion of Pell grant recipients attending for-profit colleges rose from 15 to 25 percent, while declining from 35 percent to 32 percent at community colleges. Given the much higher prices at for profit institutions, this has meant a huge -- but hidden -- tuition increase for low-income students.
Since former Congressman Steve Gunderson (R-WI) was named in January as the new head of the largest for-profit college association, APSCU, there has been talk that he might take a “kinder, gentler” approach to leading the troubled industry, which has pursued a take-no-prisoners lobbying approach in Washington.
The for-profit college and university business is a $30-billion-dollar industry in the United States. According to investigative journalist Daniel Golden, in the last decade, the for-profit colleges and universities have tripled enrollment and recorded profits of $26 billion.
With for-profit colleges under siege in Washington, Mitt Romney’s full-throttled endorsement for Full Sail puts him squarely in the middle of a political debate.
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, has been on a crusade over the past few years against for-profit colleges. You know, schools such as the University of Phoenix or the DeVry Institute, educational outfits operated by profit-seeking businesses.
West Virginia’s public higher education oversight body will, for the first time, have authority to regulate and shut down struggling private and for-profit colleges in the state if the Legislature approves a new rule change in the coming months.
For-profit colleges took a hit this week in California, another sign that policy battles over the commercial higher ed sector may be shifting to the states.
A stinging court loss has stirred up a heap of confusion about the fate of the U.S. Department of Education’s “gainful employment” regulations, the first results of which were released just a week ago. And while the decision is a victory for the for-profit sector, revised gainful employment rules could affect more programs at for-profits than the standards that were invalidated Saturday by a federal judge.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy has devised a new classification system to measure the performance and characteristics of for-profit colleges and universities.
A day before the federal government's controversial new rules governing vocational programs were set to take effect, a federal judge on Saturday invalidated one of its key elements, blocking enforcement of much of the regulatory framework.
Maxie Burch knew something was wrong when his campus e-mail account stopped working one recent morning. Then a maintenance man showed up to change the locks on his office door at Grand Canyon University, where the associate professor of Christian studies had taught for eight years. At 3:30 that afternoon, two security guards and a university official arrived to escort him from the campus.
At a time when U.S. colleges stand accused of illegally profiting from unsavory associations with businesses involved in awarding federal student aid, at least one major public university has found an apparently legal partner: a for-profit university.
For-profit higher education has continued to grow at a pace that once seemed unsustainable, thanks to an influx of capital, a favorable regulatory climate, and the industry's own nimble reaction to the changing demands of students.
The Education Department of the State of New York is clamping down on a fast-growing for-profit college that specializes in recruiting financially needy students who haven't graduated from high school.
In an apparent first, the for-profit higher-education industry has begun collecting data on the salaries of its college administrators. Last month, at the Career College Association's annual meeting here, it released some of the initial findings -- with some strong caveats.