Schools Matter: For-Profits Draining Federal Education Funds and Leaving Students Broke and Empty-Handed

Schools Matter: For-Profits Draining Federal Education Funds and Leaving Students Broke and Empty-Handed

For-Profits Draining Federal Education Funds and Leaving Students Broke and Empty-Handed

by Jim Horn

Tamar Lewin at the NYTimes calls these predatory corporate diploma mills "commercial colleges." How quaint.

Think Progess has the real story:

The Education Department today released new data on the rate at which higher education students default on their student loans, which showed that students at for-profit colleges — schools like the University of Phoenix or Strayer University — are defaulting at rates far above those at other institutions. In fact, 25 percent of students who attend for profit colleges default within three years. Here’s a chart comparing default rates at different types of schools (the green bar represents defaults at private, for-profit schools).

Here are some more key facts about for-profit colleges:

– Just 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, yet they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults.

– Many of the schools make up to ninety percent of their revenue from U.S.