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Trump’s Economic Era

collection effort by suspending students who failed to
meet their loan obligations. The government’s third
complaint concerns paying staff bonuses for collecting
past-due payments from students. A fourth complaint
was that not enough graduates found full-time
employment in their chosen field.

Another casualty is the ITT Technical Institute.
ITT was a technical institute that operated for profit
with 130 campuses in 38 states and was operational for
50 continuous years. On September 26, 2016, ITT Tech
abruptly shut down, leaving 35,000 students without a
degree and 8,000 employees without a job.

The reasons for the closure are the same as with
Corinthian College, financial sanctions by the U.S.
Department of Education. The Department of Education
claimed that ITT was charging tens of thousands of
dollars in tuition, but failing to provide valuable
education to its students.
A third casualty occurred in June of 2016 when
the Department of Education forced the shutdown of the
Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and
Schools (ACICS). The Department of Education
officially stripped the Accrediting Council for
Independent Colleges and Schools—the most
comprehensive accrediting agency of for-profit colleges
and universities—of its authority, handing down the
final blow in a long controversy over the council’s
ability to be an effective watchdog for students and
billions of taxpayer dollars. ACICS accredited 245
colleges that enrolled 800,000 students.

The Department of Education is now judging all
colleges and universities on graduation and retention
rates, the ability of graduates to pay back their student

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