Aggressive Recruiting At Military Bases Pays Off: For-Profit Schools Received $1.7B Of Post-9/11 GI Bill Funds – Consumerist

In a previous posting concerning these predatory for profit schools, one issue Kieler highlights concerning the 90/10 rule is that it only applies to Title IV money (e.g. PELL and federal students loans), "meaning that other kinds of federal dollars can be counted in the remaining 10% the school takes in.”

"Those funds include veterans’ and active duty servicemembers’ federal student aid – such as G.I. bill benefits and the Department of Defense’s tuition assistance funds. And 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 the 90/10 rule.

"And so, the G.I. Bill, which was created to further the education of United States servicemembers and their immediate family members, now serves as a bullseye for the for-profit education industry."

The attached article concerns this issue, again emphasizing the “gainful employment” rule.

The Post 9/11 GI Bill aims to further the education of United States servicemembers and their immediate family members, but a new government report reveals that most of those funds are going to further increase the bottomline at for-profit colleges.

Iowa senator Tom Harkin released a report [PDF] Wednesday that found for-profit colleges enrolled a record number of veterans and collected $1.7 billion in Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits during the 2012-13 school year – representing nearly a quarter of all GI benefits received during that timeframe.

To illustrate just how much money the for-profit college industry receives from servicemembers and their families, one should consider that the entire GI Bill program cost four years ago was about $1.7 billion.

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“While the Post-9/11 GI Bill was designed to expand educational opportunities for our veterans and servicemembers, I am concerned that it is primarily expanding the coffers of the big corporations running these schools,” Harkin says in a news release about the report. “It is evident that more needs to be done to ensure that veterans and servicemembers, who have sacrificed so much for our nation, are receiving a quality education—and that taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted on shoddy programs.”

Aggressive Recruiting At Military Bases Pays Off: For-Profit Schools Received $1.7B Of Post-9/11 GI Bill Funds – Consumerist