Carper Statement on ITT Tech

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.), top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, issued the following statement on the announcement that ITT Technical Institute would shutter its campuses, displacing more than 40,000 students, including nearly 7,000 student veterans.

“The closure of ITT Tech means the nearly 7,000 student veterans using their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to finance their education cannot complete their degree, even if they’re just a few credits short. ITT Tech now headlines a shameful list of for-profit college chains that have spent years and millions of dollars aggressively recruiting and enrolling veterans with generous federal benefits, only to close abruptly and leave students and taxpayers in the lurch. This is grossly unfair to our nation’s veterans and their families.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs must now work closely with the Department of Education to ensure that ITT Tech’s student veterans have the resources and guidance they need to transfer and continue their studies at a high-quality institution of higher learning. Congress has work to do, too. While not every for-profit college is a bad actor, the predatory recruitment practices employed by some of these businesses to exploit the 90/10 loophole are well documented. Enough is enough. Too many taxpayer dollars have been wasted, and too many veterans have been robbed of their time and hard-earned GI Bill benefits. Congress can take meaningful steps to prevent the next ITT Tech from reaching the point of financial collapse, and chief among them should be closing the 90/10 loophole.”