corinthian

The U.S. Education Department is creating a new office to protect federal student loan borrowers and to investigate scams in higher education. It sounds like something out of a Law & Order episode: the Student Aid Enforcement Unit. Among other things, the $13.6 million unit will probe schools that lie to prospective students about their graduation and job rates.

After coming under intense federal and state scrutiny, the for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges says it will shut down its more than two dozen remaining campuses. Massachusetts and other states have accused the career college of recruiting students with inaccurate job placement rates.

The U.S. Education Department has fined the for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges $30 million for recruiting students with inaccurate job placement rates.

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Earlier this month, the U.S. Education Department froze funding to Corinthian Colleges, one of the country's biggest for-profit higher education institutions, for reporting inaccurate job placement and graduation figures. Critics have long argued the for-profit industry misuses federal aid money at the expense of students and taxpayers. WGBH's On Campus took a closer look at the numbers.

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After a long reign as the fastest-growing and most problematic sector in higher education, for-profit colleges are on the ropes.

This week the U.S. Department of Education announced that it will review how federal student aid is administered at one of the country's largest for-profit colleges, the University of Phoenix. Owned by the publicly traded Apollo Group, the University of Phoenix enrolls over 200,000 students, rivaling the size of the nation's largest public university system.