In the coming months, millions of unemployed Americans will be seeking ways to improve their chances of getting a secure, well-paying job. Unfortunately, recessions bring out the worst in some college marketers, especially those at for-profit colleges and programs. Prospective students need honest advice about whether available programs at a school fit a student’s skills, background and goals. Instead, consumers are most likely to interact with a recruiter driven by sales targets rather than an advisor. Usually the prospect ends up in a program that invests very little of students’ tuition money on their education because the funds instead go to marketing and profit.
While student debt at for-profit colleges as a share of all student debt is still well below Great Recession levels (see Figure 2), it is rising swiftly-at a time when debt at nonprofit and public colleges is still declining or staying flat. Now is the time to prevent a resurgence of the predatory for-profit sector and avoid all the problems that it would bring.
FIGURE 2
One key to preventing the rise of predatory schools is to adequately fund public higher education-as explained in TCF’s analysis of the HEROES Act-especially community colleges. At the same time, the Trump administration’s cuts to oversight should be reversed, and important consumer protections such as the Gainful Employment rule should be reinstated. Continue reading “Data for each quarter of Direct Loan originations, disbursements, and recipients are published by Federal Student Aid (FSA)”