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U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown
Protecting Ohio
Students from For-Profit College Scams
Imagine working for months or years toward a college degree — investing
hours in late-night study sessions and tens of thousands of dollars in
loans, all in the hopes that your diploma will open new doors and
improve your job prospects. Now imagine that just weeks before you were
scheduled to graduate, your school lost its accreditation. Your diploma
could be worthless.
That’s exactly what happened to students at Cincinnati’s Antonelli
College, which just had its nursing program suspended — leaving
students, who paid almost $26,000 for their degree, in limbo just weeks
before graduation. The school failed to warn students that it was in
danger of losing accreditation, and students may not be allowed to take
Ohio board certification tests to become licensed nurses, despite all
of the work and money they invested.
This is unacceptable. And unfortunately, the Antonelli students are far
from alone.
For too long, bad actors in the for-profit college sector have been
allowed to prey on students, leaving them unable to secure the
good-paying jobs they were promised, and trapped under a mountain of
debt that they will never be able to pay off.
For-profit colleges represent just 12 percent of all higher education
students, but they account for nearly 50 percent of all student loan
defaults. More than 30 state Attorneys General, the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the
Department of Justice are all investigating for-profit colleges for
deceptive and misleading behavior. And a loophole in federal law has
allowed for-profit education companies to take advantage of men and
women in uniform with misleading marketing and recruitment pitches.
These bad actors aren’t just defrauding students — they are ripping off
American taxpayers. Almost all their revenue comes from the federal
government. It’s far past time for Congress to act.
Last year, I introduced the Students Before Profits Act, which would
hold for-profit schools and their executives accountable for misleading
students. I also introduced the Protecting Financial Aid for Students
and Taxpayers Act, which would prohibit the use of federal funds for
advertising, marketing, and recruitment because federal funds should be
used for educating students, not for producing glossy brochures or
television ads.
But students like those at Antonelli College can’t afford to wait for
new laws to be passed and take effect. There are steps the U.S.
Department of Education can and should take today to crack down on
these shady schools.
This week, I called on the Department of Education to investigate
Antonelli College, and see what relief is available to its nursing
students in Cincinnati. I have also urged the Department to ban the
practice known as “forced arbitration,” which prevents students from
having their day in court. The Department of Education has proposed a
rule banning the practice, and I will continue pushing them to follow
through.
The Department is also working on rules that would provide debt relief
to students who have been misled or defrauded by their colleges. This
is a good step. But rules are only as strong as their enforcement.
We shouldn’t punish students who attended these schools because
Congress has failed to do its job and police these institutions, but
taxpayers should not be on the hook either. That’s why the Department
needs to aggressively go after the schools themselves to recoup these
funds. These schools need to know that if they commit fraud, they — and
not their students — will pay the price.
We know that not all for-profit colleges are bad, and that some very
good schools use the for-profit model — but that is often the
exception, not the rule. Whether it’s for-profit K-12 charter schools
or for-profit colleges, Ohioans have seen time and time again that when
profit gets injected into education, it’s the students who pay the
price.
Congress has let problems with for-profit colleges fester for more than
a decade, and the Department of Education sat on the sidelines for far
too long. I will keep fighting to make sure students and taxpayers are
protected.
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