For-Profits Denounce Underestimation of their Students’ Indebtedness
It’s worth emphasizing a point Ben makes in his post below: the DC lobbying arm of the for-profit higher education industry released an official statement dismissing his analysis of the proposed gainful employment regulations as “flawed” because he assumed that students attending for-profit colleges will borrow the entire cost of their education, minus available federal grants. Their reasoning? They believe this underestimates how much those students will borrow. In reviewing drafts of the paper, I actually had the opposite concern: “Surely some students, somewhere, pay actual money out of their own pocket,” I suggested. But Ben noted that many for-profits get almost 90 percent of their revenue from federal