The Disturbing Reason Higher Education Lobbying Groups Are Supporting For-Profit Colleges

The more likely motivation for the traditional schools is that it gives the lobby strength in numbers in challenging the administration’s other regulatory actions, said Amy Laitinen, a former higher education adviser in the Obama administration who is now at the New America Foundation. Traditional college groups are upset about, among other things, the tightened standards for credit hours, which determine how much student aid the U.S. awards to students. The Department of Education’s inspector general found that accreditors were allowing colleges to inflate credit hours, but the higher education lobby said the tightened standards will stifle distance-learning courses.