Stealing America's Future: How For-Profit Colleges Scam Taxpayers and Ruin Students' Lives

Americans have become increasingly aware that many for-profit colleges – the career training schools that bombard TV, websites, and city buses with slick ads promising high-paying careers – are a bad deal for students, and that some are simply scams. These schools have been caught luring students -- veterans, single mothers, and others struggling to get ahead -- with false claims about the cost of programs and the value of degrees, and then leaving them unemployed and buried in debt. The for-profit college industry has been taking more than $30 billion annually in taxpayer dollars. But when President Obama’s administration sought to hold predatory schools accountable, the industry worked to derail reforms by buying the most expensive lobbyists, the most revered endorsers, from Colin Powell to Suze Orman, and the allegiance of powerful politicians. This is a story of how Washington created a monster, one so big that it can work its will on the political system even after the facts have heavily discredited it.

David Halperin has been fighting on the front line of efforts to protect students and taxpayers from predatory for-profit colleges. His book is a heavily-reported account of the industry, the victims of its fraud and corruption, and the Washington showdown it provoked.