The for-profit education empire strikes back

If you haven’t invested in for-profit education, maybe now’s the time. That’s because your representatives in Congress gave the industry a license to print money.

Hidden in a $39.5 billion budget-cutting package (ha!) was the provision that “colleges will no longer be required to deliver at least half their courses on a campus instead of online to qualify for federal student aid,” said The New York Times this week. (Story, TimesSelect req’d; emphasis added.)

Lifting that restriction means that students at online colleges like the University of Phoenix now qualify for federal student aid. That means more of your tax dollars will be flowing into places (opinion follows) where the quality of education might be a wee bit questionable.

The Times points out that lobbyists for the for-profit education industry have become significant arm-twisters and buck-passers (literally!) in D.C. But did they have help?

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