For-Profit Colleges and the GI Bill: A Worthwhile Investment?

The proliferation of for-profit colleges and questions about their recruiting tactics and program quality has caused concern among educators and legislators for quite some time. This issue has also been a concern within military and veteran communities because of the number of servicemembers and veterans who choose to use their tuition assistance or GI Bill benefits at for-profit colleges. The enactment of the Post 9/11 GI Bill has made this a more urgent problem for two reasons. First, a larger number of servicemembers and veterans are using these benefits at for-profit colleges. Second, as for-profit colleges seek to stay within the mandates of the 90/10 rule, which requires that they receive no less than ten percent of their revenue from federal Title IV funding sources, they are aggressively targeting servicemembers and veterans eligible for GI Bill benefits because those benefits do not count as ‘federal’ benefits for purposes of the 90/10 calculation.