The
Obama administration and the Democratic members of the Senate Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee are concerned about
whether federal student aid is being used effectively to graduate
postsecondary students with degrees or certificates that prepare them
for entry into high-skill, high-demand occupations. These officials
have been looking at institutions with high dropout rates and those
whose students accumulate student debt in excess of their ability to
repay their loans. To address one part of this issue, veterans’
educational benefits, the committee released the report Is the New G.I. Bill Working? For-Profit Colleges Increasing Veteran Enrollment and Federal Funds.
Three
years ago, according to the report, the HELP Committee determined that,
of the top 10 recipients of veterans’ education benefits under the
Post-9/11 GI Bill, eight were large, publicly traded companies operating
for-profit colleges. Now, in the program’s fourth year, analysis finds
that enrollment of veterans in for-profit colleges has again increased
substantially, even though overall for-profit college enrollment has
declined.
Financially,
the report notes that, “Taxpayers continue to spend twice as much on
average to send a veteran to a for-profit college,” even as up to
two-thirds of the total students who enrolled at these for profit
colleges in 2008–09 terminated their studies without a degree or a
diploma. There also is the concern that some for-profit college
companies are increasing their dependence on veterans funds “to comply
with federal requirements intended to ensure that these companies do not
become overly reliant on federal education resources.”
In
addition to these general findings, other specific discoveries are
causing concern among the committee members. Examples of these include
the following:
- In 2009, 62 percent of veterans attended a public college. That percentage dropped to 50 percent in 2013. The percentage of veterans enrolled in for-profit colleges increased from 23 to 31 percent over that same time period.
- From the 2009–10 to the 2012–13 school years, the number of veterans attending for-profit colleges and the amount of benefits those colleges received increased more than at other institutions of higher education.
- The yearly burden on taxpayers is twice as high, on average, to send a veteran to a for-profit college as compared to a public college or university ($7,972 versus $3,914).
- For the 2012–13 school year, Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits in the amount of $1.7 billion went to for-profit colleges. This was nearly the entire program cost in 2009.
These
and other HELP Committee concerns are detailed in this report, and show
why the for-profit higher education sector has become increasingly
controversial in recent years.
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