For-Profit Colleges Are Bankrolling Romney to Keep Student Loan Money Flowing
Source: Truthout
On April 23, 2012, The Des Moines Register reported that the average debt for an Iowa college graduate in 2011 was nearly $30,000. However, "
a)t University of Phoenix in Des Moines, it was about $50,000." This coincides with the data compiled national by the Department of Education discussed in our last article.
The Register continues on to demonstrate what students receive for that high debt. "At one congressional hearing, a career services adviser from a for-profit school talked about being pressured to call former students and persuade them to sign forms stating they were using the skills learned in school at their current jobs. One 'game art and design' student was paid $8.90 an hour working in the video game department at Toys R Us. He had incurred $100,000 in student loan debt getting his degree."
In November 2010, the General Accounting Office (GAO) issued a report based upon an investigation by undercover agents at for-profit institutions. The GAO sums up its findings in this manner:
Undercover tests at 15 for-profit colleges found that four colleges encouraged fraudulent practices and that all 15 made deceptive or otherwise questionable statements to GAO's undercover applicants. Four undercover applicants were encouraged by college personnel to falsify their financial aid forms to qualify for federal aid - for example, one admissions representative told an applicant to fraudulently remove $250,000 in savings. Other college representatives exaggerated undercover applicants' potential salary after graduation and failed to provide clear information about the college's program duration, costs, or graduation rate despite federal regulations requiring them to do so. For example, staff commonly told GAO's applicants they would attend classes for 12 months a year, but stated the annual cost of attendance for 9 months of classes, misleading applicants about the total cost of tuition. Admissions staff used other deceptive practices, such as pressuring applicants to sign a contract for enrollment before allowing them to speak to a financial advisor about program cost and financing options.
Read more: http://truth-out.org/news/item/9790-for-profit-colleges-are-bankrolling-mitt-romney-and-other-republicans-to-keep-their-public-student-loans-flowing
GOP Plan, austerity on public programs.
For-Profit colleges plan is to get rid of the competition and that
means public colleges and university.
No wonder For-Profit colleges are bankrolling the miserable
Greedy-One-Percent (GOP).
= new reply since forum marked as read
It's really easy to default on a student loan--just don't pay it back.
It is very hard to escape the indebtedness of a student loan. On that we agree. These days, the Federal government pays the banks what they are owed on defaulted, guaranteed student loans and then sometimes sends the IRS after the student for the cash. In most cases, the student can't repay (neither through garnishment nor withholding of income tax returns), and in those cases the government often sells the debt to debt collectors for pennies on the dollar. "We the people" pay the loan off, and the poor student gets to be hounded by debt collectors for the rest of his or her life.
Nice system we have. 
-Laelth
