What States Can Do to Protect Students from Predatory For-Profit Colleges – The Century Foundation
State policy leaders have an opportunity to take the lead in protecting students—and especially student veterans—from being targeted by predatory colleges. Given failings by the federal government to police for-profit colleges and to ensure basic rights for students to attend college without being defrauded, it now falls to the states to step in and do this necessary work of regulation and protection. This report presents seven policies that states can implement to ensure their students are not defrauded. In addition to state legislation, we have identified non-legislative solutions for a number of the problems plaguing the for-profit college sector.
The ideas in this report build on our 2017 toolkit.1 If you have questions or would like assistance with regard to any of these proposals, contact statetoolkit@tcf.org or help@vetsedsuccess.org.
Why Focus on For-Profit Colleges?
For-profit colleges and career training institutes—often national chains owned by private corporations—have a long history of waste, fraud, and abuse.2 Federal and state law enforcement across the country have carefully documented deceptive recruiting and false promises, and have sued these colleges and multi-campus corporations for defrauding students.