In 2010, Congress reauthorized the Post-9/11 GI Bill by changing reimbursement rates from by-state maximums to a nationwide limit. This policy created exogenous variation in financial aid for veterans at private universities. We detect changes in tuition only for for-profit colleges, where we estimate a 1 percent pass-through rate. This response…

The Pell Grant is targeted to students with the greatest financial need, and many policymakers find the Pell Grant a useful policy lever for promoting access and success for students from lower- and moderate-income backgrounds. There are several examples where policymakers use Pell eligibility to allocate resources and hold colleges accountable…

In this follow-up to our 2021 report, we again focus on the world of charter schools run for profit, a world both hidden and misunderstood. We focus on how for-profit operators expanded their reach and enrollment during the Pandemic years so that one in every five charter school students attends a school controlled by a for-profit corporation. We…

For decades, the federal government has expected vocationally focused programs in higher education, especially among for-profit colleges, to lead to gainful employment in a profession. In the mid-2010s, the U.S. Department of Education developed gainful employment (GE) regulations that sought to tie a program's federal financial aid eligibility to…

Efforts are underway by the Senate education committee to reauthorize the Higher Education Act. Lawmakers are focused on establishing a state-federal partnership program to increase investments in higher education, providing more information to students and their families so they can make informed choices about where to go to college, and…

Each year, the U.S. Department of Education assigns all private nonprofit and for-profit colleges receiving federal financial aid dollars a financial responsibility score, which is designed to reflect an institution's overall financial stability. Yet no scholarly literature has examined financial responsibility scores or whether colleges respond…

Deregulation of for-profit colleges led to a precipitous rise in enrollments from 1990 to 2010. Since 2010, regulation, investigations, and sanctions have led to enrollment declines in for-profit postsecondary institutions. Initially barred from receiving Title IV federal funds, in the form of Pell Grants and Stafford Loans, for-profit colleges…

Between the 2008-09 and 2016-17 school years, over 300 degree-granting higher education institutions in the United States have closed their doors. An overwhelming majority of these recently closed institutions are for-profit colleges, which often serve a population of disproportionately low-income students receiving Pell Grants and federal loans.…

The fortunes of the for-profit higher education industry rise and fall with the political tides in the United States. During the 8 years of the George W Bush Administration (Republican), the for-profit sector of US higher education prospered. The following two terms of the Obama Administration (Democrat) resulted in the loss of all the ground…

Online learning continues to grow at post-secondary institutions across the United States, but many question its efficacy, especially for students most at-risk for failure. This paper engages that issue. It examines recent research on the success of community college students who take online classes and explores similar comparisons using 656,258…

This First Look report presents selected findings about student financial aid during the 2015-16 academic year. These findings are based on data from the 2015-16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS:16), a nationally representative sample survey of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled any time between July 1, 2015, and June 30,…

This study used archival sources to examine the factors that encouraged for-profit business education to shift during the 1970s from small, certificate programs for bookkeepers and secretaries to large, multisite universities for mid-level managers. Using data from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, as well as trend data from the Bureau of Labor…

The Federal Pell Grant End-of-Year Report presents primary aspects of Federal Pell Grant Program activity for the 2012-2013 award year. This presentation is a compilation of quantitative program data assembled to offer insights into the changes to the Title IV applicant universe and the Federal Pell Grant Program. The Federal Pell Grant…

We use administrative data from five states to provide the first comprehensive estimates of the size of the for-profit higher education sector in the U.S. Our estimates include schools that are not currently eligible to participate in federal student aid programs under Title IV of the Higher Education Act and are therefore missed in official…

This study examines the institutional factors associated with student loan default. When a college has more than 30% of its students default on their loans, then the institution faces federal sanctions that could make them ineligible from participating in the federal student loan program. Using Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System…