Dive Brief:

• The Obama administration has expanded protections for veterans seeking higher education, offering an improved tool with which to compare schools and strengthening oversight of colleges serving veterans.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education reports the updated GI Bill Comparison Tool will give prospective students information about graduation and retention rates of veterans at specific colleges, and the federal government will increase enforcement action against colleges that take advantage of veterans using deceptive recruitment practices.
• Besides taking these steps, Obama urged Congress on Veterans Day to pass laws improving the quality of schools that get GI Bill funding, protecting GI Bill benefits for students whose schools close mid-term, and adding GI Bill tuition benefits to the calculation of federal revenue for-profit colleges collect.

Dive Insight:

Counting GI Bill tuition benefits as federal money would change the definition of the 90/10 rule, which currently prevents for-profit colleges from getting any more than 90% of total revenue from the federal sources. This means colleges can't operate exclusively with tuition payments through federal financial aid. Obama wants to reduce the cap to 85% of total revenue.

So far, veterans benefits do not count as federal money in this calculation, which has made students using the GI Bill particularly attractive to for-profit colleges. Their tuition payments are guaranteed through the government but these students don't put the programs any closer to the 90/10 threshold. Aggressive recruitment of veterans has gotten several for-profit college chains in trouble, including ITT Educational Services Inc., and Corinthian Colleges Inc.