Durbin Statement On Devry Decision To Limit Revenue From Federal Student Aid
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) issued the following statement after DeVry University announced it would limit the share of revenue its six colleges derive from federal taxpayers, including tuition assistance provided through the Department of Defense and G.I. Bill benefits through the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“It is breathtaking to say that any for-profit business will ‘limit’ its federal subsidy to 85% of its revenue, but in the bizarre world of for-profit schools, this is actually progress,” said Durbin. “This is what my bill, the POST Act, would require. I hope now DeVry would be willing to endorse my bill to hold the rest of the for-profit industry to this standard and create real accountability.”
Durbin’s Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers (POST) Act, introduced in November of 2015, would help put an end to the for-profit industry’s predatory marketing campaigns and aggressive recruiting of veterans, servicemembers, and their families. It would prohibit for-profit colleges and universities from receiving more than 85% of their revenue from the federal government and change the calculation of federal revenue to include all federal funds.
In 2014, an estimated $2 billion in Department of Veterans Affairs G.I. Bill funding and $248 million in Department of Defense Tuition Assistance and MyCAA funding went unaccounted for in the federal revenue calculation for for-profit colleges and universities.