Student Rights
Now, more than ever before, higher education is a necessary ladder for students looking to pull themselves into family-sustaining employment and financial security.
Unfortunately, the ballooning cost of quality education has placed a massive $1.7 trillion debt load on the shoulders of American students. Predatory for-profit colleges and private career schools prey on vulnerable students and push them deeper into poverty by enrolling them in high-debt, low-return programs.
Advocacy
We advocate on behalf of student borrowers, for-profit school students, and taxpayers to fight for reforms that will create meaningful change. For the past few years, Economic Action worked with partners to improve the student loan servicing industry and protect students from predatory for-profit schools in our state. Servicers, who are supposed to help borrowers affordably repay their loans, are currently driving customers deeper into debt due to perverse profit incentives. Our work includes increasing protections for current and prospective students at for-profit colleges and expanding access to affordable and healthy food for college students and secure housing.
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RESEARCH
The rising cost of higher education has created a demand for affordable options, and unfortunately that demand is being met by predatory for-profit colleges. Our research report, Making the Grade, illuminated the enormous impact predatory for-profit colleges and private career schools have on low-income communities and communities-of-color in our state. In our newest report, Grading Maryland’s For-Profit Schools, we built on our past research to provide prospective students and their families with information about the quality and outcomes of Maryland for-profit and career schools, addressing the serious concerns with Maryland for-profit schools regarding high costs and low-returns, unfair and deceptive marketing that targets low-income communities of color, and low spending on student instruction.
Know Before You Enroll
We developed a multimedia consumer education campaign – Know Before You Enroll – to help prospective students avoid predatory institutions. We have a website with toolkits for students and a comprehensive grading system for a number of trade and degree granting schools across the state.
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Watch our Student Rights Program Manager, Dariya Brown, explain the tax credit and walk through the application.
FOR-PROFIT SCHOOL TESTIMONIAL
Tiara attended (and graduated from) a for-profit school in Maryland. Despite the school’s promises that they would help her find lucrative employment, Tiara ended up without a job and with thousands of dollars in debt.
Unfortunately, Tiara’s story is not unique; students, especially low-income students of color, are disproportionately targeted by private career and for-profit institutions.
Listen to Tiara tell her powerful narrative about the predatory for-profit school industry.