by Chris Kirkham, Huffington Post
With a mere eight lines buried in an 82,000-word budget bill passed in 2006, Congress eliminated legislation that had for more than a decade limited how many students colleges could enroll in online courses — rules aimed at protecting students against dubious programs. Those eight lines have proven a potent fertilizer for a for-profit college industry that has since grown to enormous proportions, collecting most of its profits via federal student aid dollars. In the five years since Congress deregulated online education, enrollments at for-profit colleges have nearly doubled. Six major corporations owning for-profit institutions have enjoyed initial public offerings on Wall Street, with each promoting the rapid growth of online classes to investors and netting millions in compensation for executives. Revenues have doubled at the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University, two of the largest players — so has the rate at which its students have defaulted on their federal loans. The story of how this single snippet of legislation became law, propelling a collection of for-profit colleges into a full-scale industry, presents a classic case of the workings of power in Washington.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/john-boehner-for-profit-colleges_n_909589.html
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