A U.S. military program that paid $175 million to for-profit colleges for active-duty service members’ tuition in 2009 may be wasting money because of insufficient oversight, government investigators said. The Defense Department grants tuition assistance without having a system to track complaints, and it reviewed less than a third of the courses offered by nonprofit and for-profit colleges, according to a Government Accountability Office study obtained by Bloomberg News. Institutions that provide online courses, especially for-profit colleges, targeted the federal funds, according to Sen. Thomas Carper, D-Del., who requested the study.
Congress and the Department of Veterans Affairs are investigating colleges that market educational services to current and former military members. The Defense Department paid $517 million to all colleges for service members’ tuition in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009. About $175 million of that went to for-profit colleges, according to a December report by Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who has been investigating student recruitment at for-profit colleges.
The lack of monitoring leaves military members vulnerable to recruitment abuses, according to a report released Tuesday by the GAO, Congress’ investigative arm. Defense Department officials who were interviewed for the report said that while they don’t keep official records of complaints about such abuses, they recalled that most were related to for-profit schools, the GAO said.
In one case, for-profit college recruiters called and e-mailed a service member day and night after he elected not to sign up for classes, according to the report. In another case, a for-profit college was charging higher tuition rates to service members than civilians, while offering the service members gas cards for completing courses, the report said. The report didn’t name specific schools involved in abuses.
