DAILY HERALD: Durbin leads charge to close G.I. Bill loophole for for-profit colleges

Career College Central Summary:

When it comes to enrolling veterans and their families, there is only upside for for-profit colleges. Men and women who serve in the military receive federal education funding that has become a stable source of revenue for many of the schools. And that money is exempt from a key federal rule that governs the way for-profit colleges are funded.
But a group of Senate Democrats are ready to put an end to that. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Tom Carper, D-Del., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced legislation Wednesday to close a loophole in the so-called 90/10 rule, which prohibits for-profit colleges from getting more than 90 percent of their operating revenue from federal student aid funding. Money from the G.I. Bill, which provides veterans and their families with funding for college, does not count toward that threshold despite being federal aid.
As a result, lawmakers and consumer advocates say for-profit colleges aggressively recruit members of the military. About 40 percent of G.I. Bill tuition benefits have gone to for-profit schools in the past five years. Corinthian Colleges, the for-profit giant that filed for bankruptcy last month amid allegations of predatory lending and lying to the government about its programs, received $186 million in military tuition funding.
"While not every for-profit college is a bad actor, one veteran mistreated is one veteran too many," Carper said, in a statement. "We need to use common sense here. It doesn't make sense for taxpayers to send veterans to for-profit schools that can be 100 percent subsidized using taxpayers' dollars."

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DAILY HERALD