Angie Walls
(photo by doonbugsbunny from Shutterstock)
Unpublished

The number of students dropping out at for-profit colleges has more than tripled over the last decade, according to a new report from Education Sector. The college trend research study compares enrollment between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, showing overall that more students are borrowing to pay for their education and more students are dropping out.

This trend is most evident for for-profit colleges, since they have significantly increased student enrollments from fewer than 500,000 to more than 1.8 million in the past nine years.

The report notes that for-profit colleges “contributed a substantial portion of the increase in overall student borrowing from 2001 to 2009, even though they enroll only 9 percent of all college students.”

Also, borrowers who dropped out from for-profit colleges encountered the highest unemployment rates. According to the report, while college students with loans faced a 26 percent unemployment rate overall, those from for-profits saw unemployment rates higher than 36 percent.

The Obama administration is concerned with the rising loan debts at for-profits, especially among low-income and Veteran students who qualify for federal loans, making them one of the primary marketing audiences for for-profit colleges. Earlier this month, Obama’s ban on for-profit college recruiting bonuses was upheld by a federal appeals court, which would prevent recruiter bonuses from being tied to the number of students they sign up.