Bill seeks to cut off for-profit colleges from federal funds

For-profit colleges in the United States have been criticised for depriving their students of a quality education and burying them in debt. Now, some Democrats hope to cut the institutions off from federal funding, writes Annie Nova for CNBC.

A bill introduced this month by Representative Pramila Jayapal (Washington) and Senator Sherrod Brown (Ohio), dubbed the ‘Students Not Profits Act of 2019’, would ban the US Department of Education from sending its federal grants and loans to for-profit colleges. “It’s time for taxpayers to stop subsidising the institutions that put hardworking students through this heart-breaking mess,” Jayapal said in a statement.

A number of consumer advocacy groups, including Americans for Financial Reform, the Debt Collective and the Project on Predatory Student Lending, have endorsed the legislation. The bill Democrats introduced recently to overhaul the Higher Education Act, which dictates the scope of federal aid for millions of students, would also crack down on for-profit colleges. Democrats accuse Education Department Secretary Betsy DeVos of siding with for-profit colleges over the students they’ve harmed. Recent documents show the department sent more than US$10 million to the Art Institute chain, even though the institutions were not accredited and ineligible for the funds.
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