Hey, for-profits…worried much? For months now, for-profit universities have fought a battle against the Education Department’s “gainful employment” rule, which would cut off federal student aid to programs whose graduates have high debt-to-income ratios and low loan-repayment rates. An article in the Chronicle today outlines the greatly increased spending that lobbyists representing for-profit colleges are throwing at policymakers.  Some of the companies spent three or four times as much on lobbying in the second quarter of 2010 than in the same period in 2009. One company, Education Management Corporation, spent eight times as much.
Now, to be fair, there is always another side to every story. And that other side involves people. People who attended for-profit schools. People who got the education they needed. People who improved their lives, and the lives of their families, by attending for-profit colleges. Those people are out there.

But the question is this: if there are so many success stories, why not let that speak for itself? Why the need to spend $1.4 million dollars to lobby Washington? OH, fine, that’s two questions. So why stop there? One more: if your programs are as successful as your “data” suggests, why are you so worried about the gainful employment rule?