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U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown
Ensuring
Taxpayer Dollars are Spent on Education, Not Corporate PR
As the summer comes to a close, students across Ohio are crisscrossing
the state, heading back to campuses and settling into dorms. Set foot
on any college quad, and the excitement is palpable — young people
excited for their futures, which they hope will be even brighter thanks
to higher education.
We know that education is one of the surest paths to economic success.
It’s one of the strongest anti-poverty tools we have, and the best leg
up into the middle class. It’s why we invest in universities and
community colleges and federal student aid, like Pell Grants and
Stafford Loans.
But increasingly, for-profit colleges are taking advantage of these
financial aid programs designed to help students, and instead are using
them to pad their profits.
In 2009, 15 of the largest for-profit education companies received 86
percent of their revenues from federal student aid programs. And they
spent almost $4 billion dollars — nearly one-quarter of their budgets —
on advertising, marketing, and recruitment. In many cases, that
self-promotion was aggressive and deceptive. Because of these
misleading marketing campaigns, students looking for a quality college
education can find themselves at for-profit institutions that are more
concerned with profit margins than career readiness.
This spending on self-promotion by for-profit colleges and universities
is gargantuan compared with non-profit colleges, and even compared to
other for-profit companies, where marketing budgets typically only
represent between four and 12 percent of sales. This practice is a
waste of taxpayer money that should be going toward real educational
opportunities, not corporate profits, and it needs to end.
That’s why I introduced legislation, the Protecting Financial Aid for
Students and Taxpayers Act, to crack down on these predatory practices,
and ensure that federal student aid is used for education, not
corporate marketing campaigns.
My bill would prohibit all colleges — public, private, and for-profit —
from using Pell Grants, federal student loans, and other federal
education funds for advertising, marketing, and recruitment. It builds
on an existing, bipartisan law that already prohibits schools from
using taxpayer funds for lobbying efforts.
This law would particularly help our student veterans and service
members, who are often the targets of aggressive and misleading
promotion by schools. It would prevent schools from using revenue from
the G.I. Bill and other service member tuition benefits to fund
marketing. Right now, seven of the eight for-profit education companies
that receive the most G.I. Bill funds are under federal investigation
for their deceptive recruitment tactics. It is despicable enough that
these companies are preying on our servicemembers and veterans — and
it’s beyond the pale that they’re doing it with taxpayer funds. It
needs to end.
Congress needs to act to ensure that federal student aid and taxpayer
dollars are used to educate students, not fund corporate marketing
campaigns. This legislation would help ensure that all colleges make
learning and instruction a priority.
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