"The Problem Is That There Are a Lot of Students Who Enter into These Programs Who Don’t Graduate, but They Leave with Quite a Bit of Debt Anyway"

"APSCU's argument that they serve non-traditional students is certainly true, but for-profit colleges have clearly become an easy way for Wall Street to make money in recent years. In 2009, publicly traded for-profits had an average profit margin of 19.7 percent and generated a total of $3.2 billion in pre-tax profit. Most of that money is coming straight from the federal government. If it were used to set students up to succeed, then it would be money well spent. But it's clear that for-profits are not living up to that standard. They're spending more resources trying to recruit students so they can capture federal dollars and less money offering them a valuable education. This regulation is designed to crack down on the worst offenders. If that means students will lose access to some scholarships and opportunities at those schools, as APSCU warns, that's not a bad thing."


Danny Vinik at The New Republic discusses new regulation of for-profit colleges.