Without Romney To Shield Them, For-Profit Colleges Must Face Reality [View all]

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/post-election-for-profit-colleges/



On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney praised overpriced for-profit colleges and promised to protect them from accountability. But he lost.


Without Romney To Shield Them, For-Profit Colleges Must Face Reality
Posted at 3:56 pm by David Halperin

Since last week’s election, the Fox News Channel has featured several corporate executives complaining about the results. But it’s likely that few are as upset as CEOs of the troubled for-profit college industry. This sector, which is deeply dependent on the federal government, bet heavily on a Republican victory.

Mitt Romney, who has a financial stake in the industry, went out of his way to praise for-profit colleges, and he pledged to undo Obama reforms aimed at holding these companies accountable for fraudulent practices and poor quality schools. Sparked by Romney’s apparent eagerness to let them off the hook and keep the $32 billion in federal taxpayer dollars flowing into their coffers every year, big for-profit colleges and their executives contributed heavily to Romney and Republican Super PACs.

The for-profit colleges also staffed up their lobbying and corporate ranks with well-connected Republicans like Margaret Spellings and Sally Stroup, both former George W. Bush officials on whose watch the government turned a blind eye to the industry’s misbehavior.

Last week, the for-profit colleges lost their bet on the GOP. Now they face an Obama Administration and U.S. Senate majority — backed by veterans, civil rights groups, and many others — increasingly determined to halt the industry’s torrent of waste, fraud, and abuse.