Warren, Colleagues to Education Department: What Steps Are You Taking to Protect Students Vulnerable to For-Profit Colleges?
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona requesting updates on the Education Department’s (ED) plans to conduct oversight of for-profit colleges and institutions of higher education that pose risks to students during the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
For far too long, for-profit institutions were allowed to take advantage of students with relative impunity while collecting a steady flow of taxpayer-funded federal aid. Students at for-profit colleges are much less likely to graduate than students at public and private non-profit schools, yet they incur significantly higher student loan debt and default on their loans at higher rates. A report from the Leadership Conference Education Fund found that “those who graduate from a for-profit college do worse in the labor market than they otherwise would with only a high school education, even though the credentials they offer tend to be 30 to 40 percent more expensive than the same credentials from a public institution.” Black and Latino students are over-represented at these institutions, which contributes to the racial disparities in student loan debt.