“I taught at a ‘for-profit’ college. They’re predatory disasters.”
Students rack up debt for worthless diplomas – debt they default on at twice the rate of their peers at traditional colleges
For a clear picture of how damaged the US postsecondary education system is, one need only look at the money-printing mill that is the for-profit college. I should know: I spent 10 years “teaching” at one of the most notorious cash-grab colleges in the country. There, I saw profoundly underprepared students racking up far more debt than their “traditional” peers – debt they would default on at more than twice the rate of those peers, landing the costs of these wayward scholars directly on the shoulders of taxpayers.
This week, the US Department of Education accidentally showed just how badly the problem of for-profit college debt is intertwined with predatory loan collection: in a court filing, the Department of Education jacked up its estimate of its own illegal debt collection from 16,000 former students at bankrupt Corinthian College to nearly three times that amount. All while the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, who was held in contempt of court for the department’s actions, continued to refuse debt forgiveness for thousands of students ripped off by for-profit colleges.