Senate Hearing on For-Profits to Feature Video of Government Undercover Investigation

Government investigators will testify at a Senate hearing on Wednesday about an undercover inquiry into recruiting practices at for-profit colleges.

The hearing will feature video of college recruiters and admissions officers talking to the investigators, who were posing as students, Democratic aides told The Chronicle.

The aides would not say what the investigation, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, had found, only that it included a “nationally representative” sample of for-profit colleges, and that it found “very similar practices” at both publicly traded and private for-profit colleges, and at large and small institutions.

In recent years, several former recruiters have filed whistle-blower lawsuits against for-profit colleges, accusing the institutions of misrepresenting information to prospective students about graduates’ salaries, job-placement rates, and the transferability of credits. Last year, Alta Colleges Inc. agreed to pay the Department of Justice $7-million to settle a lawsuit in which former employees alleged that recruiters had engaged in practices “designed to mislead prospective students and to misrepresent material facts to them.”

The rest of the witness list for Wednesday’s hearing is still being finalized and will be announced on Monday.

The hearing, being held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is the second in a series focusing on for-profit higher education. At the first hearing, in June, the chairman of the committee, Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said he would offer legislation to crack down on “bad actors” in the rapidly growing sector.