By definition, for-profit colleges are institutions operated by private, profit-seeking businesses. This means that their main emphasis is not education but revenue enhancement. Mitt Romney has stated that for-profit colleges offer students better opportunities to get jobs without saddling them with a lot of debt. It makes sense that Romney would give a shout out to Full Sail University, a college run by one of his donors, but it is simply not true that students are less likely to escape the debt trap if they attend for-profit colleges; in fact, the tuition is often higher. Students who do not graduate do not recoup their losses, and the institutions have already pocketed tuition fees, so there is little incentive to increase their graduation rates. There is little accountability on the part of those who run the university—many people in admissions offices actively recruit students without giving them a picture of the financial aid they can expect to receive.  Congress held a hearing in August 2010 over accusations that for-profit colleges not only fail to offer students a good education but also defraud them.

Do you remember the whole crisis with subprime mortgage loans that helped fuel our economic recession? Student loans at these colleges work the same way. Instead of screening students to ascertain their ability to pay off loans or making sure that young people whose cerebral cortexes are not fully formed (i.e. all of us under age 21) do not make bad decisions these colleges saddle students with subprime loans. The institution pockets the money regardless, and low-income students get fed to the loan sharks. These students will march into the job market with tens of thousands of dollars in debt, a degree that may or may not be actually accredited, a potential lack of job prospects, and possibly even a bad credit score, making it difficult for them to take out loans in the future. The loans are high-interest, so the longer it takes to pay them off, the more students owe. Pick whatever metaphor you like, but we can all agree that students who cannot pay off these loans are in big trouble.

According to an article by the Huffington Post, Wade Henderson, the President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that, as with subprime mortgage loans, the targets of these sorts of loans are disproportionately low-income and minority students.  Who funds this fraudulent system that U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) labeled a “ponzi scheme”? Taxpayers do: for-profit institutions receive almost 90 percent of their revenue from federal taxpayer dollars and 23 percent of all federal student aid money. It sounds like quite a shrewd business model, but it furnishes a pretty bleak future for students who want a good education and find themselves pawns instead. Just as when healthcare and justice are turned into a business, there is often a monetary incentive to make decisions that run counter to the interests of those being served.

We are lucky that Wesleyan is a non-profit institution that relies on a combination of tuition, endowments, and donations. That doesn’t mean that we can ignore the plight of equally gifted students who fall victim to profit schemes instead of getting to enjoy their time as undergraduates. Obama tried to address the phenomenon somewhat by declaring in his State of the Union address that Congress needs to prevent interest rates on loans from doubling in July, and that taxpayer funding will decrease for institutions that raise their tuition. However, that second decision will hurt state institutions because they rely heavily on federal funding, and while the economy is still in a slump, they may have to raise tuition in order to maintain necessary resources. Instead of Band-Aid measures, we need Consumer Protection Bureau-style regulations for students in order to ensure that, regardless of our alma maters’ motives, all college students receive affordable, high-quality educations. Of all the business investments to make, investing in our future is the most important. That means investing in education.