11.04.15

Durbin: The For-Profit College Model Not Sustainable

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) today said that the decline of the for-profit college industry over the last five years has shown that Wall Street is downgrading these for-profit colleges and universities because they believe this model is flawed and can’t be sustained. Durbin joined his colleagues – U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Tom Carper (D-DE), Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Brian Schatz (D-HI) – in discussing a variety of unfair and deceptive for-profit college industry practices and the resulting increase in oversight of the industry by federal, state and local agencies.

   

When speaking about the federal government’s role in regulating the industry, Durbin said, “While we’ve come a long way in five years, there’s more work to be done.  We have to do a better job of ensuring that institutions receiving federal funds provide academic quality to their students through improving accreditation and other front-end oversight.  We need to make sure that we eliminate incentives for for-profit colleges to target service members and veterans. We need to ensure that those who have been taken advantage of by this industry get meaningful federal student loan debt relief.  And we need to improve how we hold for-profit education companies and their leaders accountable so that federal taxpayers aren’t ultimately on the hook for misdeeds.”