For-profit colleges misusing Pell Grants

Pell Grants, critical support for college students in this time of high-cost education, are instead, supporting corporations that operate for-profit universities. The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), chaired by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is investigating this misuse of taxpayers' money.

Testifying at a Senate HELP hearing on March 10, I was part of a case study of Bridgepoint Education Inc., a company that purchased a college in Clinton, renamed it Ashford University, and grew the 300-student population to 78,000 online students in five years. Profits from the university increased from

$3.9 million in 2007 to $216 million in 2010.

These profits are taxpayer funded. In 2009, 86.5 percent of Bridgepoint's income resulted from federal grants and loans; 60 percent of the total went to profits and marketing; the remaining 40 percent included paying the CEO's

$20 million salary,

20 times the salary of Harvard University's president. Meanwhile, annual expenditures on education fell from $5,000/student to $700/student in four years.

Nationwide, 12 percent of college/university students attend for-profit universities, but these individuals are responsible for 48 percent of educational loan defaults.

For more details, please listen to Harkin's opening remarks at http://help.sen

ate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=7c3b8c00-

5056-9502-5d7a-

54d0c8286a98.

Arlie Thoreson Willems

Anamosa