The Profits of Failure: For-profit Colleges and the Closing of the Conservative Mind

Most of us know little about for-profit colleges, in part because they’re widely viewed as the “second-class citizens” of higher education. Parents dream of sending their kids to an Ivy League school, a flagship research university, their alma mater, or a regional NCAA powerhouse, but not of sending them to a for-profit college. Nonetheless, good for-profit colleges train thousands to work as medical assistants, business administrators, RNs, cosmetologists—jobs that can change their lives. Bad for-profit colleges, however, leave many thousands of students jobless and in debt. The federal government heavily subsidizes for-profit colleges; regulation could determine the fate of billions of taxpayer dollars and is therefore of interest to all of us—we’re helping fund those colleges, including the disreputable ones.The students who attend for-profit colleges are among America’s most vulnerable: single moms, disadvantaged adults, veterans, minority students, and mid-career employees looking to better their lives. The worst scandal in higher education is the subpar training so many of them receive at low-performing and predatory schools. In 2019, three such college chains closed a total of eighty campuses midsemester, stranding 32,000 students just partway through their courses. After years of sacrifice and hard work, they faced trying to complete their degrees at other institutions—if they could find any that would accept their credits—or canceling their federal loans and starting their career education all over again. Since 2016, nearly 300,000 students have filed to have their loans forgiven, alleging that their for-profit colleges defrauded them. What could our government do to limit such abuses? The Profits of Failure offers a definitive answer.