VA should rein in predatory for-profit schools
By Carrie Wofford on February 1, 2021
As Denis McDonough prepares to take the helm as the new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he must address many difficult challenges. But there’s one issue that’s easy — stopping the fleecing of America’s veterans by predatory for-profit colleges. It’s not just a policy issue; it’s a Biden family issue.
President Joe Biden’s late son, Beau, was a national leader in standing up for veterans who were scammed by for-profit colleges targeting the GI Bill. As Delaware attorney general, he led a successful, multistate action in 2012 to give VA control over a for-profit college website, GIBill.com, that had tricked tens of thousands of veterans out of their GI Bill benefits. A year later, Biden partnered with Vice President Kamala Harris (then California attorney general) to successfully sue Corinthian, a for-profit college chain that bamboozled tens of thousands of veterans and servicemembers, even posing their salesmen as “Pentagon advisers.”
Flash forward to 2020: The Trump administration decimated much of the progress Biden and Harris started. Recently the GIBill.com domain went back to private ownership after VA failed to renew it, undoing Biden’s hard work. And last summer, the Trump administration overruled VA career civil servants who tried to follow the law and stop the flow of GI Bill funds to deceptive colleges.
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