Intense lobbying by for-profit colleges has diluted the Obama administration's promised regulatory plan to tightly control the flow of federal aid to the $30-billion industry.
According to the New York Times, the colleges spent $16 million on marshalling top Democrats - including Richard A. Gephardt, former House majority leader and John Breaux, the former Louisiana senator - with close ties to the White House in strategizing and pleading the industry's case.
Federal investigations found that for-profit college recruiters often lured students - most of them veterans, low-income people, and minorities - into enrolling and seeking federal student aid, but the colleges often failed to deliver promised training for jobs, leaving students with huge college debts.
The White House vowed to end the abuse by imposing tough rules hitching billions of dollars in student aid to formulas that measure student debt burdens and income after graduation. Colleges would risk losing federal aid altogether if their students weren't earning enough to start paying back their loans.
But the industry's backers reportedly met several times with White House and top Department of Education officials, despite the president's vow to curtail the inordinate influence of lobbyists.
A former education official who helped shape the original regulations to be imposed on the for-profits schools to make sure they adequately train students for jobs, said the lobbying helped water down the plan.
