When I left the Army, I wanted to pursue a career as a video game designer. A recruiter for for-profit Gibbs College in Massachusetts, owned by Career Education Corp., told me their program would put me on a fast track to a job at a video game company, but the experience left me with poor training and a worthless degree. The paid internship they promised turned out to be an unpaid assignment doing the laundry of a wedding photographer.
So I tried again, at the Art Institutes, owned by EDMC. Again, the recruiter promised their degree would get me the video design job I wanted. But as I went forward with classes, the school kept bringing me back to the financial aid office to push me to take out more high-interest student loans. When I couldn't afford any more, I had no choice but to drop out. Now I'm unemployed with more than $85,000 in student loan debt.
It's time that predatory career colleges like ITT Tech, Everest, The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Sanford-Brown Institute, Heald College, Kaplan University, and The University of Phoenix are held accountable for abusing students and ripping off taxpayers.
Career education programs are supposed to prepare students for jobs where they can earn a living, including the ability to repay your student debt. But far too often, these schools ruin students’ lives.
The Department of Education recently proposed a rule to hold career education programs accountable. But the proposal is full of loopholes and giveaways to schools. We need a strong rule that protects students from sham colleges that leave them with overwhelming debt and dismal career prospects.
For-profit colleges have about 13 percent of US college students but account for nearly half of student loan defaults. Many of these schools get close to 90 percent of their revenue from taxpayer dollars. But they spend more of that money on marketing, big CEO salaries, and profits for Wall Street private equity firms than on educating students. As a result, more than half of the students who enroll in these schools drop out within about four months.
What's worse, these schools often target vulnerable populations, including veterans and disadvantaged communities who can least afford costly and worthless degrees.
To adequately protect students and taxpayers and prompt schools to quickly improve or end weak programs, the rule (Docket ID ED-2014-OPE-0039) needs to be strengthened by:
- Providing financial relief for students in programs that lose eligibility. Schools with ineffective programs that lose eligibility for federal aid should be required to make whole the students who enrolled in the program. Providing full relief to all such students is not only fair, it also creates a greater incentive for schools to quickly improve their programs.
- Limiting enrollment in poorly performing programs until they improve. Under the proposed regulation, poorly performing programs can increase the number of students they enroll, without limit, right up until the day the programs lose eligibility. Instead, the rule should impose enrollment caps until a program improves.
- Closing loopholes and raising standards. The proposed regulation is too easy to game, and its standards are too low. For example, programs can pass the standards even when 99% of their students drop out with heavy debts that they cannot pay down. Unscrupulous schools can easily manipulate job placement rates or evade accountability by limiting program size. They can exclude the debt of graduates who enroll in a program for just one day, and can enroll students in online programs that lack the accreditation needed to be hired in the states where the students live. These types of loopholes need to be closed and the standards raised.
- Protecting low-cost programs where most graduates don’t borrow. Low-cost programs where most graduates do not borrow at all – such as community colleges -- should automatically meet the standards because, by definition, these programs do not consistently leave students with unaffordable debts. Burdening these programs with a complicated appeals process could prompt more schools to leave the federal student loan program and lead to the closure of effective, low-cost programs.
It’s time to protect students and taxpayers by holding predatory colleges accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse with our tax dollars. Join us and make your voice heard! #studentsDemand #Gainful