{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://cohen.house.gov/press-release/cohen-durbin-harkin-congress-should-end-loophole-encourages-profit-colleges-target", "Cohen, Durbin, Harkin: Congress Should End Loophole that Encourages For-Profit Colleges To Target Veterans & Servicemembers", "2013-11-14", "2013", "2013-11", "Democrat", "House", "TN", "Steve Cohen", "C001068", "cohen.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "[WASHINGTON, D.C.] \u2013 Congressman Steve Cohen (TN-09) today introduced legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would help put an end to the for-profit college industry\u2019s predatory marketing campaigns and aggressive recruiting of veterans, servicemembers and their families.\u00a0The\u00a0Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers (POST) Act, which U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) have also introduced in the Senate, would eliminate the loophole that allows these proprietary companies to receive more than 90% of their revenue from the federal government.\u00a0\n\u201cFor-profit colleges can receive overwhelming majorities of their revenue \u2014up to 90%\u2014from federal sources such as student loans,\u201d said Congressman Cohen. \u201cToo often, these schools fail in their duty to adequately prepare graduates for jobs that will allow them to repay those loans, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill. Even worse, a loophole in current law allows unscrupulous colleges to receive even more federal funds by enrolling veterans and servicemembers. This loophole encourages bad behavior that weighs down our nation\u2019s heroes with mountains of debt and few career prospects while lining the pockets of wealthy for-profit investors with taxpayer money. Simply put, this is unacceptable. We are entrusted with spending our monies efficiently and wisely, but too many for-profit colleges do not meet that test. I am glad to be working with Senators Durbin and Harkin to close this loophole, encourage for-profit colleges to provide better educations, and protect American taxpayers.\u201d\n\u201cIn the United States, for-profit colleges account for a disproportionate share of the students who have trouble paying back their loans (a measure of value in education),\u201d said Senator Durbin. \u201cThey enroll only about 12% of all college students yet account for almost half of all student loan defaults. By law, for-profit college companies are allowed to receive no more than 90% of their revenue from federal financial aid programs.\u00a0 This high threshold allows far too much federal money to funnel to an industry that often provides a greater return on taxpayer investment to its administrators and investors than it does to its students.\u00a0 But there\u2019s another catch.\u00a0 Money from the new Post 9/11 GI Bill and from Department of Defense tuition assistance programs isn\u2019t counted which leaves hundreds of millions of taxpayers\u2019 dollars virtually unregulated. Consequently, these schools aggressively target veterans and servicemembers who too often don\u2019t receive the quality of education they deserve.\u00a0 We can\u2019t let this continue.\u201d\n\u201cThe Department of Defense\u2019s Tuition Assistance program and the Post-9/11 GI Bill are intended to help servicemembers and veterans\u2014who have sacrificed so much for our country\u2014obtain a quality education,\u201d Senator Harkin said. \u201cInstead, because of a loophole in the law, some for-profit colleges use predatory and deceptive tactics to target servicemembers and veterans for enrollment in order to tap into the benefits they and their families receive. Our servicemembers and veterans deserve better, and this common-sense bill will help protect taxpayer dollars and put the focus back on giving these men and women the degree and skills they need to build a brighter future.\u201d\nThe current federal 90/10 rule is a provision in the law that bars for-profit colleges and universities from deriving more than 90% of their revenue from the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s federal student aid programs.\u00a0 The other 10% needs to come from sources other than the federal government.\u00a0 The purpose of this rule is to ensure that schools are not counting on taxpayer dollars to be their sole source of revenue.\u00a0\nBecause of the way the legislation was written, veterans\u2019 and active duty service members\u2019 federal student aid \u2013 such as G.I. bill benefits and the Department of Defense\u2019s tuition assistance funds \u2013 does not currently count toward the 90%.\u00a0 As a result, for-profit educational institutions have been aggressively recruiting and enrolling veterans, service members and their families to their programs as a way to comply with\u00a0the 90/10 rule.\u00a0\nThe POST Act would re-instate the original ratio of 85/15\u2014which was only loosened to 90/10 in 1998\u2014and change the definition of what counts as federal revenue so that it includes all federal funds.\u00a0This new definition would eliminate the powerful incentive for-profit schools to aggressively recruit service members and veterans and ensure that all schools are complying with the law as it was intended.\nAdditionally, the Cohen-Durbin-Harkin POST Act would:\n Increase penalties for noncompliance with the new 85/15 rule \u2013\u00a0Under the legislation, for-profit colleges\u00a0would lose eligibility to participate in federal student aid programs after one year of noncompliance with the new rule (currently, for-profit colleges must be noncompliant for two years before they lose eligibility).\n  Eliminate accounting tricks that inflate non-federal funding sources \u2013 Currently, for-profit colleges that issue private loans directly to students are allowed to calculate a large portion as revenue for the purposes of 90/10 rule compliance before any of the loan is paid back.\u00a0 This accounting trick has led to for-profit colleges issuing private loans to students with little expectation of that loan being paid back.\u00a0 Today\u2019s legislation would only allow actual payments that students make to be counted as revenue.\n Organizations that have endorsed the POST Act include: The Education Trust, the National Association of College Admission Counseling, the Military Officers Association of America and the Young Invincibles.\nFor-profit institutions of higher education enroll about 12% of all college students, but take in 25% of the Department of Education\u2019s federal student aid funds and account for 47% of student loan defaults.\u00a0 For-profit colleges have much a higher three year student loan cohort default rate of 22.7%, compared with 11% at public schools and 7.5% at private, non-profit schools.\nSimilarly, while for-profit schools are a minority of the institutions involved in the Tuition Assistance program, they take in a disproportionate share of Tuition Assistance funding.\u00a0 A Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee investigation found that 41% of Tuition Assistance in FY2011 went to just six for-profit colleges: American Public Education, Inc. which includes American Military University; Bridgepoint Education, Inc.; TUI Learning LLC; Apollo Group Inc.; Columbia Southern University; and Grantham University.\u00a0\nThe Tuition Assistance program has been growing rapidly with more than 286,000 servicemembers enrolled in over 874,000 courses.\u00a0 In FY2012, the Defense Department spent $660 million on Tuition Assistance \u2013 half of which went to for-profit schools.\u00a0 More than 36,000 military spouses access courses through the MyCAA program and, in FY2012, the Defense Department spent $66 million on MyCAA \u2013 60% of which went to for-profit schools.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://cohen.house.gov/press-release/cohen-durbin-harkin-congress-should-end-loophole-encourages-profit-colleges-target"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.1047828011214733, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}