While for-profits educate less than 10 percent of students, those colleges' students received close to a quarter of Pell Grant and federal-student-loan dollars in 2008, according to the College Board. And they accounted for 44 percent of defaults among borrowers who entered repayment in 2007, according to the Institute for College Access and Success, a nonprofit organization that advocates making higher education more affordable. When the government can't collect on those loans, taxpayers pick up the tab.
For-profit colleges have long blamed the sector's higher-than-average default rates on the sociodemographics of their students. According to the Career College Association, 43 percent of students attending for-profits are members of minority groups, and almost half are the first in their families to attend college. More than three-quarters are employed.
In the 2009-10 academic year, the average for-profit institution charged $14,174 in tuition and fees, according to the College Board, and the average community college only $2,544.
Thirty percent of loans made to students attending four-year for-profit colleges have defaulted within 15 years of entering repayment, more than twice the default rates at public and private nonprofit four-year colleges, which are 15.1 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively.
http://chronicle.com/article/Many-More-Students-Are/66223/
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