On June 27, 20 state attorneys general announced a court settlement with QuinStreet Inc., a marketing company working for for-profit colleges, that will shut down the deceptive website GIBill.com and turn that web address over to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, The Huffington Post reports.
GIBill.com, until recently, looked a lot like a government website. But people who went there seeking advice on higher education options were always steered to a for-profit college that paid for the privilege. Deceptive marketing like this, along with coercive recruiting tactics, push thousands of our troops and veterans to shoddy for-profit colleges that have high prices, low-quality educations, high dropout rates, and overwhelming loan debts for students.
Since these bad practices have now been widely exposed, why are even the worst actors in the for-profit college industry still sharing in the $32 billion in federal financial aid that goes to this sector every year? One word: lobbying.
“It’s reached a point now when you get little or nothing done when you take on the for-profit schools in Congress,” Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said at a Washington press conference announcing the settlement. “Why? They own every lobbyist in town.”
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