- 7 out of 10 graduating students in the US leave college with debt
- Student debt in the US is now over $1 trillion, surpassing credit card and auto loan debt
- Student debt is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and can lead to wage garnishment and lawsuits
- Student debt has tripled in the past decade
- The federal government subsidizes over 90% of student debt
- For-profit schools account for nearly a third of all student loans, despite having only 13% of students
- For-profit schools spend more on marketing than on faculty
- For-profit schools use manipulative tactics to recruit students, including exploiting their insecurities
- Many students from for-profit schools do not graduate or find work in their field of study
- Students from some for-profit nursing programs have not received proper training and have been placed in inappropriate settings

- The for-profit school industry, including Corinthian Colleges and Ashford University, has been exploiting loopholes to receive funding from federal loans and veteran loans.
- For-profit schools took in $1.7 billion in GI Bill money in the last reported school year alone.
- The Obama administration proposed tighter regulations, but the for-profit industry spent $10 million in lobbying and successfully weakened and eventually struck down the gainful employment rules.
- The student debt problem extends beyond for-profit schools and is a result of leaders not prioritizing education funding.
- Students with loans are advised to enjoy their college experience because they may be paying for it for the rest of their lives.

John Oliver discusses student debt, which is awful, as well as for-profit colleges, who are awfully good at inflicting debt upon us.

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ this week, hundreds of thousands of students started classes at colleges and universities, and 1 thing is increasingly clear.

By the time they graduate, most students are going to be leaving with a lot more than just a tacky polyester robe and a copy of Oh, The Places You'll Go that their tearful aunt got them.

places you'll go ♪ They'll be leaving with this.

7 of 10 graduating students left college last year in debt.

The total bill due for students in America tops 1000000000000 dollars.

Is now bigger than debt from credit cards and auto loans, and is second only to mortgages.

If you go to college, you're almost certainly going to get it.

And if you do, it will follow you for the rest of your life.

Because legally, student debt is a special kind of debt.

It is the most collectible kind of debt there is.

They will garnish your wages, they will intercept your tax refunds, they will sue you in court.

They'll steal your wallet, they'll pawn your baby shoes.

They will shrink themselves down to 2 inches high, hide in your pocket and take that money back 1 dime at a time.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Student debt has tripled in the past decade.

It has surpassed Bob Marley's greatest hits album as the thing seemingly every college student has.

Well, more than 90% of student debt is subsidized by the federal government.

And it all started with such good intentions.

Here is 1 of the federal student loan program's early champions.

Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

By the way, the single worst Kurt Russell movie ever made.

But a higher education system open to all was 1 of LBJ's top priorities, along with creating, of course, a Libyan pool party in Vietnam, and...

And finding a pair of pants that could contain his gigantic testicles.

Now, that last 1 might sound like a joke, but listen to this actual phone conversation that he had in the Oval Office with a representative from the Hagar Clothing Company.

The crotch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight.

So when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there because they cut me.

Let's see if you can't leave me about an inch from where the zipper ends round under my...

♪ Look, we all thought the B in LBJ stood for Bains, but it actually stands for Balls Balls, My Big Bulbous Balls Are Too Close To My Bunghole.

--HOLMES LAUGHING IN BACKGROUND- Isn't history fun?

But like LBJ's testicles, the federal student loan program has now swollen to uncomfortable proportions.

--LAUGHTER -- 1 reason for this might be that in recent years, states have slashed funding for higher education by 23%.

Public institutions have responded by raising tuition rates, forcing students to take out ever larger loans.

Why else do you think the colleges have so many f*****g acapella groups?

They know they sound stupid, they just can't afford instruments anymore.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Another consequence of these cuts has been that some community colleges have been forced to reduce capacity.

Leads you to things like a nursing program in North Carolina with a waiting list just to get on the waiting list.

Because that is what you need in the land of tobacco and barbecue, a shortage of nurses.

But all this shows that people in this country, that they want to go to school to better their lives.

And it is good that they have broad access to federal funds to help them do that.

The problem is, this is where we meet 1 of the biggest drivers of student debt.

For-profit schools, like University of Phoenix and ITT Tech.

Most of them are publicly traded on Wall Street and they run commercials like this.

1 evening I was watching TV and an ITT Tech commercial came on and I decided to give them a call.

I think my education has paid off tremendously.

There's nothing I would change about my life.

Although I will say, there's something about the phrase everything is perfect that I find inherently suspicious.

Because the only other person who says that is Janice in accounting, and she secretly puts Jim Beam in her coffee cup...

-...and repeats, -"Keep it together, you can do this, Janice," into the bathroom mirror 5 times a day.

-...four profit schools account for nearly a third of all student loans, despite having just 13% of our country's students.

And part of why for-profit schools account for so much student debt is that they are not cheap.

I was surprised to learn how expensive tuition at the For Profits is.

5 to 6 times the cost of a community college, and as much as twice a four-year state university.

5 to 6 times the cost of a community college.

Plus, You don't even get to hang out with a study group full of lovable scamps for...

But if you are wondering why they charge so much, it is nothing to do with the quality of education.

If you take a look at for-profit colleges, the analysts will tell you that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the total revenue of the company is in sales and marketing.

In most cases, the faculty are in the 10 to 20 percent range.

They spend half the amount on teachers that they do on marketing.

He's basically saying, hey teachers, we're not saying you don't matter, we're just saying ads about you matter twice as much.

You know, 1 for you, 2 for a spot during Wayne Brady.

The thing is, from a purely business perspective, that disparity makes some kind of sense.

When I go and buy perfume for my mom, The chemicals in the bottle and the bottle itself amount to about $0.50.

OK, for a start, stop buying perfume for your mom, you f-ing creep.

-♪♪♪♪ I like the way you smell, Mom.

-♪♪♪♪ And secondly, perfume is not education, although I will say both do market themselves aggressively.

With perfume, it's spraying it into people's eyes when they walk into a department store.

And for for-profit schools, it's actually even worse.

Zara Crowley was a recruiter at the for-profit Westwood College in 2007.

Crowley says she quit because she couldn't continue preying on low-income youth and using something called pain points.

Pain point would be something, they work at McDonald's, they don't want to be like their parents.

We'd turn it on them and say, I thought you wanted to do something with your life.

Do you want to work at McDonald's for the rest of your life?

They are told to hit people's pain points.

The only professionals who should be doing that are dominatrixes...

And this pain point approach seems to be an industry-wide technique.

This is an actual slide some ITT Tech recruiters were shown during training.

That photo is from Marathon Man, where Laurence Olivier famously played a Nazi torturer.

And it's maybe not saying much for your business model if your essential logic is, -"Hey, guys, this worked really well for the Nazis, let's at least give it a go.

But if you do sign up for 1 of these schools, what kind of education are you going to get?

Well, remember the ITT Tech graduate from earlier and his absolutely perfect f-ing life.

Well, it actually says on the screen that he graduated with an associate's degree in engineering from ITT's Sylmar campus.

Now, we checked their public filings, and out of 115 students who enrolled in that program in the class of 2012, three-quarters didn't graduate, and only 13 found work in that field.

Meaning, everyone else would've genuinely been better off studying engineering at Hogwarts, because at least that way, they'd have a f**king owl to show for it.

And even for those who do graduate, job hunting might be a little difficult, as students from a Corinthian College nursing program found.

I've been on countless interviews, and they all ask if I've ever been in a hospital, and I would have to tell them, we never set foot in a hospital.

We went to a museum of Scientology for our psychiatric rotation.

Scientologists do not believe in psychiatry.

Their museum is literally called Psychiatry and Industry of Death.

Going to the Museum of Scientology for your psychiatric rotation is certifiably insane.

Or evidence of a buildup of thetans in your system.

Now, now, full disclosure, we asked Corinthian about this, And they requested that we point out a few things, such as the fact that those women later sued the school, a financial settlement was reached, and that those women later went on to become registered nurses.

And also, that us not mentioning those facts to you would constitute reckless disregard for the truth.

I mean, not the kind of reckless disregard for the truth that would lead you to send medical students to a f-ing Scientology museum, but, you know, pretty reckless.

They also wanted us to take clear and extensive note of subsequent events and interests of doing that.

You should know that this summer, after a government investigation of their job placement numbers, Corinthian Colleges have agreed to sell or close every school they operate in the U.S.

I presume that that's what they wanted us to tell you, so job done.

to be fair, to be fair here, we're good, we're good.

Now, to be fair here, The federal government does try to regulate these schools.

They are only allowed a mere 90% of their funding to come from federal loans.

However, for-profit schools have found themselves a truly horrifying loophole.

The 90-10 rule says that the schools can only have 90% of their money coming from loans,

but the other 10% could come from veteran loans.

So these schools have gone after the veterans' benefits as a way to leverage their ability to sign up more students.

And the only time going after veterans is okay is when you let them walk through the door in front of you, not when you try to take their fucking money.

Now, for-profit schools took in 1.7 billion dollars in GI Bill money in the last reported school year alone.

And this is the length to which Ashford University was willing to go to get that sweet, sweet budget-assisting veteran dollar.

I went to a Marine base in North Carolina, and I found that 1 of the for-profit colleges was sending a recruiter to the Wounded Warriors barracks, where she was signing up, brain-injured Marines who, even had difficulty remembering what courses they were taking.

They've just given us all a first-class education in the depths of human depravity.

And here is where I actually have some good news and some bad news for you.

The good news is, a few years back, the Obama administration proposed tighter, gainful employment standards.

The bad news is, everything that happened after that.

The for-profit industry spent 10000000 dollars in lobbying that year, and also, and this, thankfully, is a fun bit, their trade group inundated the government with thousands of letters from ordinary students and educators asking them not to tighten the regulations.

It reads, I am a career college student at institution studying program.

Institution is providing me with the education and training necessary to obtain the job I've always wanted as a career.

Many, many people didn't even bother filling in the blanks.

Couldn't they at least have done it a bit like Mad Libs?

You could have gone to Butt-Cheese University seeking a degree in wiener studies.

And the worst thing is, The campaign worked.

The gainful employment rules were weakened and eventually struck down completely.

The latest version of the rules are expected by November, and the for-profit school trade group, Apscu, is still lobbying hard against them.

And if you'd like to, let Apscu know how you feel about their industry's behavior.

We've actually prepared a form letter for you, which reads...

-..."To whom it may concern, I am, name here, a human being with, describe at least some level of sense, who is sick of your synonym for bullshit.

Whatever the benefits of for-profit schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors and additional insults, ideas for places to cram this letter once rolled up, proposals for human waste products to be eaten, thank you for your time, name here again.

Feel free to go online, copy this letter, please do not bother to fill it in at all, and send it to apscue at this address.

And that might make you feel a little bit better, but it will only be temporary, because the student debt problem is far bigger than just for-profit schools.

If they all went away, student debt problem would still be here.

Because our leaders have decided that while education is incredibly important, it is not important enough to actually pay for.

So, with that in mind, let me speak right now to all current freshmen in college who have student loans.

You need to stop watching this show right now.

Get out there and enjoy the fuck out of your college experience, because you may be paying for it for the rest of your life.

Find out if you're gay or not, and even if you are not, have some gay experiences.

Become that weird guy on campus who rides a unicycle from class to class.

Find out whoever the Winklevoss twins of your school are and steal their idea for a website, and shoot fireworks out of every bodily orifice you can f***ing find.

Please, make sure your college years are the best ones of your life, because thanks to the debt that we are saddling


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ this week, hundreds of thousands of students started classes at colleges and universities, and 1 thing is increasingly clear. By the time they graduate, most students are going to be leaving with a lot more than just a tacky polyester robe and a copy of Oh, The Places You'll Go that their tearful aunt got them. -♪ Oh, the

Speaker 1: places you'll go ♪ -♪ Oh, the

Speaker 0: places you'll go ♪ They'll be leaving with this.

Speaker 2: 7 of 10 graduating students left college last year in debt. The total bill due for students in America tops 1000000000000 dollars.

Speaker 0: That's right. Student debt in the U.S. Is now bigger than debt from credit cards and auto loans, and is second only to mortgages. Essentially, student debt is like HPV. If you go to college, you're almost certainly going to get it.

And if you do, it will follow you for the rest of your life. Because legally, student debt is a special kind of debt.

Speaker 3: It is the most collectible kind of debt there is. It is non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. They will garnish your wages, they will intercept your tax refunds, they will sue you in court.

Speaker 0: Well, they won't stop there. They'll steal your wallet, they'll pawn your baby shoes. They will shrink themselves down to 2 inches high, hide in your pocket and take that money back 1 dime at a time. -♪ ♪ -♪ Student debt has tripled in the past decade. It has surpassed Bob Marley's greatest hits album as the thing seemingly every college student has.

How did this happen? Well, more than 90% of student debt is subsidized by the federal government. And it all started with such good intentions. Here is 1 of the federal student loan program's early champions.

Speaker 4: Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty.

Speaker 0: Ah, escape from poverty. By the way, the single worst Kurt Russell movie ever made. -... But... But...

But a higher education system open to all was 1 of LBJ's top priorities, along with creating, of course, a Libyan pool party in Vietnam, and... And finding a pair of pants that could contain his gigantic testicles. Now, that last 1 might sound like a joke, but listen to this actual phone conversation that he had in the Oval Office with a representative from the Hagar Clothing Company.

Speaker 5: The crotch down where your nuts hang is always a little too tight. So when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there because they cut me. It's just like riding a wire fence. Let's see if you can't leave me about an inch from where the zipper ends round under my... Back of my bunghole.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: BANGING ON DOORS, CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Speaker 0: ♪ That's real. -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: BANGING ON DOORS, CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

Speaker 0: ♪ Look, we all thought the B in LBJ stood for Bains, but it actually stands for Balls Balls, My Big Bulbous Balls Are Too Close To My Bunghole. --HOLMES LAUGHING IN BACKGROUND- Isn't history fun? But like LBJ's testicles, the federal student loan program has now swollen to uncomfortable proportions. --LAUGHTER -- 1 reason for this might be that in recent years, states have slashed funding for higher education by 23%. Public institutions have responded by raising tuition rates, forcing students to take out ever larger loans.

Why else do you think the colleges have so many f*****g acapella groups? They know they sound stupid, they just can't afford instruments anymore. -♪ ♪ -♪ Another consequence of these cuts has been that some community colleges have been forced to reduce capacity. Leads you to things like a nursing program in North Carolina with a waiting list just to get on the waiting list. Because that is what you need in the land of tobacco and barbecue, a shortage of nurses.

But all this shows that people in this country, that they want to go to school to better their lives. And it is good that they have broad access to federal funds to help them do that. The problem is, this is where we meet 1 of the biggest drivers of student debt. For-profit schools, like University of Phoenix and ITT Tech. Most of them are publicly traded on Wall Street and they run commercials like this.

Speaker 6: 1 evening I was watching TV and an ITT Tech commercial came on and I decided to give them a call. I think my education has paid off tremendously. I got into the field of aerospace. It's been over 12 years now. There's nothing I would change about my life.

We've been married almost 10 years now. We have 2 beautiful boys. Everything is perfect.

Speaker 0: Hm. That's nice. Although I will say, there's something about the phrase everything is perfect that I find inherently suspicious. Because the only other person who says that is Janice in accounting, and she secretly puts Jim Beam in her coffee cup... -...and repeats, -"Keep it together, you can do this, Janice," into the bathroom mirror 5 times a day.

-...four profit schools account for nearly a third of all student loans, despite having just 13% of our country's students. That is way out of proportion. And part of why for-profit schools account for so much student debt is that they are not cheap.

Speaker 7: I was surprised to learn how expensive tuition at the For Profits is. 5 to 6 times the cost of a community college, and as much as twice a four-year state university.

Speaker 0: Wow. 5 to 6 times the cost of a community college. Plus, You don't even get to hang out with a study group full of lovable scamps for... For... For let's say...

For how long... For let's say 6 seasons and a movie. But if you are wondering why they charge so much, it is nothing to do with the quality of education.

Speaker 8: If you take a look at for-profit colleges, the analysts will tell you that anywhere between 20 and 25 percent of the total revenue of the company is in sales and marketing. About a quarter. In most cases, the faculty are in the 10 to 20 percent range.

Speaker 0: They spend half the amount on teachers that they do on marketing. Think about that. He's basically saying, hey teachers, we're not saying you don't matter, we're just saying ads about you matter twice as much. You know, 1 for you, 2 for a spot during Wayne Brady. That's about fair.

The thing is, from a purely business perspective, that disparity makes some kind of sense.

Speaker 8: When I go and buy perfume for my mom, The chemicals in the bottle and the bottle itself amount to about $0.50. The advertising amounts to $5 or $6.

Speaker 0: OK, for a start, stop buying perfume for your mom, you f-ing creep. -♪♪♪♪ I like the way you smell, Mom. -♪♪♪♪ You smell good. -♪♪♪♪ And secondly, perfume is not education, although I will say both do market themselves aggressively. With perfume, it's spraying it into people's eyes when they walk into a department store.

And for for-profit schools, it's actually even worse.

Speaker 2: Zara Crowley was a recruiter at the for-profit Westwood College in 2007. Crowley says she quit because she couldn't continue preying on low-income youth and using something called pain points.

Speaker 9: Pain point would be something, they work at McDonald's, they don't want to be like their parents. We'd turn it on them and say, I thought you wanted to do something with your life. Do you want to work at McDonald's for the rest of your life?

Speaker 0: Yeah. They are told to hit people's pain points. The only professionals who should be doing that are dominatrixes... Or emo bands. That's it.

And this pain point approach seems to be an industry-wide technique. This is an actual slide some ITT Tech recruiters were shown during training. That photo is from Marathon Man, where Laurence Olivier famously played a Nazi torturer. And it's maybe not saying much for your business model if your essential logic is, -"Hey, guys, this worked really well for the Nazis, let's at least give it a go. But if you do sign up for 1 of these schools, what kind of education are you going to get?

Well, remember the ITT Tech graduate from earlier and his absolutely perfect f-ing life. Well, it actually says on the screen that he graduated with an associate's degree in engineering from ITT's Sylmar campus. Now, we checked their public filings, and out of 115 students who enrolled in that program in the class of 2012, three-quarters didn't graduate, and only 13 found work in that field. Meaning, everyone else would've genuinely been better off studying engineering at Hogwarts, because at least that way, they'd have a f**king owl to show for it. -$5,000.

And even for those who do graduate, job hunting might be a little difficult, as students from a Corinthian College nursing program found.

Speaker 10: I've been on countless interviews, and they all ask if I've ever been in a hospital, and I would have to tell them, we never set foot in a hospital. Ever. We went to a museum of Scientology for our psychiatric rotation. What?

Speaker 0: Scientologists do not believe in psychiatry. Their museum is literally called Psychiatry and Industry of Death. Going to the Museum of Scientology for your psychiatric rotation is certifiably insane. Or evidence of a buildup of thetans in your system. It's, there's no...

It, it, it, you teach the controversy. Now, now, full disclosure, we asked Corinthian about this, And they requested that we point out a few things, such as the fact that those women later sued the school, a financial settlement was reached, and that those women later went on to become registered nurses. And also, that us not mentioning those facts to you would constitute reckless disregard for the truth. I mean, not the kind of reckless disregard for the truth that would lead you to send medical students to a f-ing Scientology museum, but, you know, pretty reckless. Pretty reckless nonetheless.

Also... They also... They also wanted us to take clear and extensive note of subsequent events and interests of doing that. You should know that this summer, after a government investigation of their job placement numbers, Corinthian Colleges have agreed to sell or close every school they operate in the U.S. I presume that that's what they wanted us to tell you, so job done.

Now,

Speaker 1: to be fair, to be fair here, we're good, we're good.

Speaker 0: Now, to be fair here, The federal government does try to regulate these schools. They are only allowed a mere 90% of their funding to come from federal loans. However, for-profit schools have found themselves a truly horrifying loophole.

Speaker 11: The 90-10 rule says that the schools can only have 90% of their money coming from loans,

Speaker 12: but the other 10% could come from veteran loans. They exempted, the veterans' benefits. So these schools have gone after the veterans' benefits as a way to leverage their ability to sign up more students.

Speaker 0: Yeah, they're going after veterans. And the only time going after veterans is okay is when you let them walk through the door in front of you, not when you try to take their fucking money. Now, for-profit schools took in 1.7 billion dollars in GI Bill money in the last reported school year alone. And this is the length to which Ashford University was willing to go to get that sweet, sweet budget-assisting veteran dollar.

Speaker 13: I went to a Marine base in North Carolina, and I found that 1 of the for-profit colleges was sending a recruiter to the Wounded Warriors barracks, where she was signing up, brain-injured Marines who, even had difficulty remembering what courses they were taking.

Speaker 0: Holy shit. I will say this for for-profit schools. They've just given us all a first-class education in the depths of human depravity. We all have a diploma in that now. And here is where I actually have some good news and some bad news for you.

The good news is, a few years back, the Obama administration proposed tighter, gainful employment standards. The bad news is, everything that happened after that. The for-profit industry spent 10000000 dollars in lobbying that year, and also, and this, thankfully, is a fun bit, their trade group inundated the government with thousands of letters from ordinary students and educators asking them not to tighten the regulations. And let me read 1 to you. It reads, I am a career college student at institution studying program.

Institution is providing me with the education and training necessary to obtain the job I've always wanted as a career. Many, many people didn't even bother filling in the blanks. Couldn't they at least have done it a bit like Mad Libs? You could have gone to Butt-Cheese University seeking a degree in wiener studies. Go the extra mile.

And the worst thing is, The campaign worked. The gainful employment rules were weakened and eventually struck down completely. The latest version of the rules are expected by November, and the for-profit school trade group, Apscu, is still lobbying hard against them. And if you'd like to, let Apscu know how you feel about their industry's behavior. We've actually prepared a form letter for you, which reads...

-..."To whom it may concern, I am, name here, a human being with, describe at least some level of sense, who is sick of your synonym for bullshit. Whatever the benefits...

Speaker 1: Whatever the benefits...

Speaker 0: Whatever the benefits of for-profit schools, your trade group is protecting some of the worst actors and additional insults, ideas for places to cram this letter once rolled up, proposals for human waste products to be eaten, thank you for your time, name here again. Feel free. Feel free to go online, copy this letter, please do not bother to fill it in at all, and send it to apscue at this address. And that might make you feel a little bit better, but it will only be temporary, because the student debt problem is far bigger than just for-profit schools. If they all went away, student debt problem would still be here.

Because our leaders have decided that while education is incredibly important, it is not important enough to actually pay for. So, with that in mind, let me speak right now to all current freshmen in college who have student loans. Okay. You need to stop watching this show right now. You don't have time for this.

Get out there and enjoy the fuck out of your college experience, because you may be paying for it for the rest of your life. I am serious. Drink beer from a funnel. Kidnap a mascot. Find out if you're gay or not, and even if you are not, have some gay experiences.

Do it now, it doesn't count. Become that weird guy on campus who rides a unicycle from class to class. Find out whoever the Winklevoss twins of your school are and steal their idea for a website, and shoot fireworks out of every bodily orifice you can f***ing find. Do it now. Please, make sure your college years are the best ones of your life, because thanks to the debt that we are saddling

Speaker 1: you

what is the audience/purpose of this episode and give me an explanation as to why this is, with proof

what is the audience/purpose of this episode

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Student Debt: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)