A recent report by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee revealed a combined $521 million in benefits for veterans, and from the Defense Department benefits for veterans in 2010 was received by 20 for-profit schools.

Provided by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee

For-profit institutions are required to follow the 90/10 rule. That is, only 90 percent of their revenue may come from federal aid. If the formula used for determining the 90 percent included benefits for members of the military, many of these colleges would not pass.

This information has been helping to fuel efforts led by U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and U.S. Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) to increase scrutiny on for-profit colleges.

“[T]hey are really going after the military in a big way,” Harkin told The Iowa Independent, believing it is because it does not count towards the 90/10 law.

Further fueling the nearly year-long investigation through the HELP Committee, which Harkin leads, is questionable recruiting and retaining efforts that have been uncovered.

Harkin said private non-profit colleges in Iowa, such as Buena Vista University, Simpson College, Graceland College and the like are still doing a good job of educating low-income students; perhaps even better than the Regents, because of the endowments they receive. But his attention toward the for-profit private colleges has raised a number red flags.

“The federal government is putting out half a billion dollars a year in educational assistance for veterans and for active duty personnel,” Harkin further told The Iowa Independent. “When I inquired from the Department of Defense as to where it was going, what was happening to these military people — Were they graduating? Were they getting diplomas? Were they getting jobs? — I got nothing back. The Department of Defense has no data on that. They simply send the money to them and that’s it.”

A Government Accountability Office report concluded along with the investigation Harkin led that the Defense Department and the for-profit industry lacked sufficient scrutiny over where tax dollars were going and how they were being used.

Carper told the Chronicle on Higher Education he was surprised to learn military aid was not included in the 90/10 rule, and suggested the government should consider adjusting that.

“I’m a big advocate of skin in the game,” he said. “There has to be skin in the game for markets to work.”

Provided by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee

For-profits have not been alone in courting members of the military. Nonprofit and public colleges have as well. A 2009 Iowa task force found adding 100 veterans a year would yield an additional $800,000 in tuition income annually for the University of Iowa and nearly $2 million in revenue for the city of Iowa City.

For-profit schools have become the fastest growing sector of higher education, moving from 550,000 students in 1998 to more than 1.8 million students by 2008. Although they are still only 10 percent of the total higher education student population in the U.S., they take 42 percent of all Pell Grants.

Deceptive Recruitment Practices

With little oversight by the government as to where the education benefits for veterans are going or being used, for-profit colleges have stepped up their recruitment of members of the military.

In one instance a veteran was repeatedly told by recruiters that his post-9/11 GI Bill benefits would completely cover the cost of his degree. It was only after enrollment, the veteran said, that he learned he would owe approximately $11,000 beyond his military benefits to Bridgepoint-owned Ashford University.

This veteran, or veterans overall, were not the only students to file formal complaints against Ashford. The complaints came from students of different backgrounds — more than 700 in a two-and-a-half year period. They accused school officials not only lying to them or misleading them, but of charging them with undisclosed fees.

One student claimed he was told he would be able to receive his teaching license from Ashford, based in Arizona. Yet a year later, right before his scheduled graduation, he learned Ashford was not allowed by the state of Iowa to award teacher licenses, and that he would have to attend a “cooperating school” in Arizona for a year. In the complaint he stated, “I was really blown away to find out that I had spent so much time and money at a college that I was not going to be able to obtain my teacher’s license from.”

A number of students also reported receiving very little help once inside for-profit institutions, insisting there was more emphasis on recruiting rather than assisting students’ classwork. Indeed, some documents detailed instructions for officials to make at least 50 outbound calls a week in recruiting efforts and hold meetings almost daily with prospective students.

In undercover audio recordings by GAO agents, counselors at the for-profit schools can be heard discrediting traditional universities for large class sizes, insisting they would not be receiving a value education. While there are lecture courses with sometimes more than 300 students in a class, most classes taken at Iowa’s public universities throughout a degree program have less than 50 students in them. They also go on to tell potential students they would have to try to get less than a B in their classes at the for-profit college.

The GAO encountered some schools encouraging prospective students to falsify documents in order to receive more aid.

Perhaps the most alarming tactic found within internal documents recently released was the use of the “Pain Funnel.”

Lines within the documents from the for-profit ITT Technical Institute, which has more than 100 campuses nationwide, include “Remind them of what things will be like if they don’t continue forward and earn their degrees” and “Poke the pain a bit and remind them who else is depending on them and their commitment to a better future.”

Drop Out Rates

Colorado Tech University’s online program has a 61 percent drop-out rate. The University of Phoenix’s Axia College has seen 84 percent of their students drop out.

Jason Deatherage, former admissions adviser at Colorado Tech, was fired for not meeting his quota of recruiting military vets. He told the New York Times there is massive pressure to enroll more veterans.

“We knew that most of them would drop out after the first session,”  Deatherage said. “Instead of helping people, too often I felt like we were almost tricking them.”

Bridgepont Education had a 63 percent drop-out rate in 2009. Despite such a high rate of drop-outs, that year Bridgepont’s Chief Executive Andrew S. Clark earned almost twice as much as Charles Edelstein, CEO of the University of Phoenix, when he raked in $20.5 million.

Provided by the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee 

Student Debt Load and Career Barriers

Although, 11 of 16 community colleges in Iowa report graduation rates comparable to or worse than Bridgeport, students at for-profit institutions are almost twice as likely to default on their student loans.

Katie Bushnell currently attends Full Sail University, a for-profit school focused on the entertainment business. Bushnell takes classes online and expects to graduate within a year with a Bachelor’s degree and nearly $70,000 in student loan debt.

According to recent data released by the U.S. Department of Education, 13.8 percent of students who began repaying their public-private partnership loans in 2008 have since defaulted. For-profit institutions, however, reported 25 percent of their graduates defaulting after three years. There has been increased scrutiny over for-profit colleges as they enroll less than a fifth of all students but produce nearly half of all loan defaulters.

Bushnell actually walked away from traditional schools before coming to Full Sail. She started at Iowa State University, then attended Des Moines Area Community College and Indian Hills Community College. Much of her collegiate experience has been financed through student loans; however, she’s been working full-time hours to afford housing and living expenses since her family cannot contribute.

She counters the complaints students have lodged at other for-profits about not receiving support while taking classes.

“Full Sail does have excellent career services that has been helping me with resumes and career building exercises,” Bushnell said.

But Bushnell is worried about what she might end up doing after college since the entertainment business in Iowa is so small. She wanted to do music promotions, but with limited opportunities, she’s now considering out-of-state sports teams. Taking classes online, combined with trying to find work and build experience booking concerts during college has also placed obstacles in her way.

“I do miss having a set class time, because it is very difficult to focus and very easy to procrastinate with online classes,” Bushnell said. “Working full time and then coming home to classes is tough chore. I am envious of students who don’t have to work full time and still get by while in school.”

Watching tuition increases and budget cuts to public universities though is a big incentive for Bushnell to avoid going back to public colleges.

Contributions and Oversight

Part of Harkin’s investigation found 95 to 98 percent of students attending for-profit colleges borrowed money to attend. Since the average cost of a credit hour was often more than double that of tuition for a public college, the debt loads were significantly higher. Iowa has ranked in the top five for highest average student debt load by the Project on Student Debt every year that they’ve compiled data, ahead of all other Midwestern states.

With all of these reported problems, Harkin is seeking better oversight of the half a billion taxpayer dollars going to the for-profit colleges through military members’ benefits.

The Department of Education has already brought forward a new plan that would deny for-profits from receiving federal student aid if their graduates cannot pay off their student debt in a reasonable time frame.

While Harkin has been leading this charge, he has also been among the recipients of donations from the industry. As The Iowa Independent reported in 2010, he took significant donations from DeVry, Inc. and Bridgepoint. Democratic U.S. Reps from Iowa, Bruce Braley and Dave Loebsack, also took contributions, as did U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was one of the biggest benefactors in contributions from the industry, receiving more than $30,000.

DeVry, based in Illinois, spent more than $300,000 on lobbying efforts in 2009 and 2010. Ten of the industry’s top companies collectively upped their spending on lobbying from $1.5 million in 2009 to more than $4 million in the first nine months of 2010. The industry is fighting against any new regulations.

“We need better oversight, and we need to bring this to light,” Harkin said. “I’ve had this ongoing investigation and it seems things keep getting worse and worse.”

The Education Department held back on imposing their new plan for regulations after facing heavy push-back from lobbying and opposition in Congress.

Wall Street money manager Steven Eisman testified before the HELP Committee last summer and called for-profit colleges “marketing machines masquerading as universities.” Eisman has hedged bets on some of these education corporations, but warned the committee the industry was reaping those rewards while taxpayers were at risk, as the companies are running on federal aid.

Harkin said Attorneys Generals around the country, including Florida, Illinois, Kentucky and Iowa’s Tom Miller, have launched investigations into the schools for any unlawful conduct. California and Maryland’s legislatures are pushing through bills to reduce or eliminate state aid to the for-profit colleges.

Mr. Gates did not place a dollar figure on the total savings from the cutbacks, some of which are likely to be challenged by members of Congress intent on retaining jobs in their states and districts. But they appear to be Mr. Gates’s most concrete proposals to cut current spending as he tries to fend off calls from many Democrats for even deeper budget reductions, and they reflect his strategy of first trying to squeeze money out of the vast Pentagon bureaucracy.

While large headquarters have been combined and realigned over the years, Pentagon officials could not recall a time when a major command was shut down and vanished off the books, even though some jobs will probably be added elsewhere to carry on essential parts of the mission.

The Wall Street Journal estimates the cuts could save $100 billion over five years. I have no way of evaluating the impact of the actual cuts. But the strategy seems brilliant to me — and I would not be surprised to see other departments and agencies doing the same and cutting themselves before Washington does the cutting for them.

Fred Kaplan, at Slate, throws on some cold water, though, noting that Defense has a whole lot to cut and should anticipate further budgetary scrutiny going forward:

The steps Gates took today have far-reaching implications; I don’t mean to minimize them. But there are other issues and questions that tap more deeply into the foundations of what he himself calls our “cumbersome and top-heavy” military, which has “grown accustomed to operating with little consideration to cost.” For instance: How many submarines and aircraft carriers does the Navy really need? And do all those carriers need the same number of aircraft and escort ships? How many fighter planes does the Air Force really need? How many brigades does the Army really need?

Gates’ new reforms are based on two premises: First, that the nation can’t afford unceasing growth in the defense budget; second, that the nation can afford moderate growth in the defense budget, as long as the Pentagon shows good faith by slashing what any objective observer would label “waste.” The first premise is unassailable, the second probably too optimistic. The fact is, we can’t afford growth in the defense budget, period. To get the cuts he’s after, Gates — as a matter of political realism — has to leave the rest of the budget alone. But at some point, some secretary of defense is going to have to open it all up to scrutiny.

Christi Parsons reports for the Chicago Tribune:

Writing to members of the Illinois delegation in Congress, Asst. Atty. Gen. Ronald Weich reaffirmed the administration’s “commitment to acquiring the facility this year,” and provided details about steps planned for the next few months.

The Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons plans to hire and train employees while other administration officials “work with Congress to obtain authorization and funding for a portion of the Thomson facility,” Weich wrote in the letter, obtained by the Tribune Washington bureau.

No timetable for the purchase, though. Will Obama punt on this until after the midterm elections?

Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy (EPA/ZUMAPRESS.com)

Just to be clear: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not talking about leaving the Pentagon. But when he ultimately does depart, possibly as soon as next year, a leading candidate to succeed him is his undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy. And judging by her speech Thursday at the annual conference of the think tank she co-founded, the Center for a New American Security, the first-ever female secretary of defense would focus on building a military that can respond with “flexibility” to unforeseen threats, sharing the security burden more equitably with civilian agencies and foreign partners, and curbing defense-sector budget waste.

[Security1] Most of Flournoy’s public speeches as undersecretary of defense have been to advocate for specific administration policies — chiefly, the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan of which she was a key architect. At the CNAS conference, the longtime defense wonk presented a broader view of the course she thinks defense policy needs to chart.

Unsurprisingly, Flournoy’s agenda sounded much like Gates’. Echoing Gates’ recent speech at the Eisenhower library on reducing inefficiencies in defense spending, Flournoy criticized the growing costs of major weapons, aircraft and sea-vessel programs as “spending more and more to get less and less.” Warning that the turbulent global economy and ballooning federal deficit will force austerity upon the half-trillion dollar defense budget, Flournoy said that the “need to make hard choices will define this generation of national-security leaders.”

So what tasks will the Pentagon need to prioritize in a future characterized by reduced resources? First, increased training, equipping and joint operations with partner militaries — alongside the Department of State, which for years tussled with Defense for budgetary influence over foreign-military financing — so that the U.S. doesn’t take on security burdens alone. Limiting what Flournoy called “national-security adventurism” is itself a priority, she said, appearing to put unilateral military action within the category of imprudent action, “recognizing the limits of what’s possible given the world in which we live and the economic pressures under which we operate.”

All of which are in line with Gates’ priorities. But looking at the spectrum of threats the U.S. needs to prepare to confront, Flournoy went somewhat further than her boss in emphasizing the uncertainty of the future. “Intelligent adversaries will seek to confront our weaknesses, not our strengths,” she said. That means U.S. forces need to be preparing for “counterinsurgency and capacity-building operations in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, but also preparing for new threats to the primary means by which the military projects its power: military bases, our sea and air assets and then the networks in cyberspace and space.”

But since constrained resources prevent the Defense Department from adequately resourcing responses to every conceivable threat, “the point is not to assume future conflicts and threats will look like current ones,” she said. It’s that “future conflicts and threats will take many different shapes, and we can’t prepare for every contingency, so we need to focus on flexibility and agility, and creating a force that’s prepared for the most likely threats and able to adapt quickly in the face of the unpredictable.”

Approaches like that, Flournoy said, are a means to place American power on a “sustainable” footing over the long term. “We can rebalance and reform,” she said, “and if we want this great nation to remain a global leader and a force for good in the 21st century, that’s exactly what we must do.”

Flournoy has deep support in defense circles, the Obama administration and beyond to implement such an agenda as Pentagon chief. One foreign diplomat who declined to speak for attribution about administration personnel choices said he was “very impressed” with Flournoy’s “focused, business-like” approach to defense policy. As co-founder of the ascendant defense think tank in Washington, CNAS, and before that as a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, she earned her stripes issuing ponderous reports about how to integrate civilian and military elements of national security before such “whole of government” approaches became fashionable. And no one interviewed for this story was able to think of any enemies Flournoy has made, a rarity for someone possessing decades of Washington policy experience.

“Frankly, she’s not just smart — she can be extremely tough when she needs to be, and that’s reputation you need to have,” said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a leading defense policy shop. “She’s the total package. There are other very well qualified people in town and out of town. But one can easily see why she’s on anyone’s shortlist to succeed Gates.”

In April, anonymous administration officials claimed to reporters that they possessed the right to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, because of Awlaki’s apparent connections to al-Qaeda. There was no due process involved, as the Constitution entitles an American citizen at the risk of losing his life at the hands of the government; he could simply be targeted for death. Not knowing why such an act was legal, I filed a Freedom of Information Act request on April 7 with the Justice Department and the CIA, the two agencies most likely to make an assessment of the killing’s legality — Justice because that’s probably a job for its Office of Legal Counsel; CIA because it would probably be the agency asked to kill an American citizen believed to be part of al-Qaeda. (And because Awlaki is in Yemen, where the CIA has launched missiles at non-citizen al-Qaeda targets in the past.)

Today I got my answer: No. That wasn’t unexpected. The path the agencies took to to reject — sort of — my FOIA request, however, was. I’ll explain.

First, the CIA. I received a letter from CIA’s information and privacy coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, reminding me that the agency’s mandate deals with “foreign intelligence — not domestic — matters.” And that apparently causes an administrative problem with addressing my request. Nelson:

Our records are not configured in a way that would allow us to perform a search reasonably calculated to lead to responsive records. Therefore, we must decline to process your request.

So I’m not being denied on any substantive ground. The CIA just doesn’t know how to search for any record it may possess about the legality of killing an American citizen, just weeks after public confirmation appears that this is an active issue in internal counterterrorism deliberations focusing on an area of historic CIA counterterrorism operations. This is quite the non-responsive search tool.

Then there’s the Justice Department. My request went to its National Security Division and not the Office of Legal Counsel, for reasons that mystify me. But Arnetta James, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Acts initiatives coordinator at the division, wrote to tell me that the division doesn’t handle the information that interests me. Reasonable! But instead of forwarding my request to OLC, she sent it to the Defense Department’s Freedom of Information Policy Office. Someone there, I’m assured, will get back to me.

While I won’t complain — I suppose it stands to reason that the Defense Department could be tasked with killing al-Awlaki and accordingly it has a legal equity here — I’m going to try to re-file explicitly through the Office of Legal Counsel, which I still presume is the branch of government most likely to handle this rather remarkable constitutional assertion. I’ll commiserate with my editors and figure out how to respond to CIA as well.

[Security1] It’s unclear when the Obama administration will actually close the facility. There’s a possibility it could still carry out the closure before the end of the year: The Defense Department has asked Congress for $350 million for all aspects of closing the Guantanamo detention facility and purchasing a new Illinois prison to house the residual population that has yet to be tried or repatriated (as well as about 48 detainees the administration seeks to hold in indefinite detention). It has placed the money in the politically potent request for funding operations in the Afghanistan war. That choice itself reflects the bipartisan resistance in Congress to actually closing the facility, despite both party’s presidential candidates in 2008 running on a pledge to end an international symbol of infamy.

Accordingly, a group of reporters toured a few of Camp Delta’s nine facilities today to get a highly constrained glimpse of residual life in Guantanamo Bay. The military command has reviewed every photograph presented here to prevent inadvertent disclosures of classified information; seven photographs I took were deleted.

A rare glimpse between two outer layers of security surrounding Camp 5 and Camp 6, two facilities modeled on prisons in Indiana and Michigan. Recently-relaxed rules for restricting photography now allow some visual representation of the shoreline. We did not get to see Camp 7, a facility containing high value detainees. “We do acknowledge there’s a Camp 7,” said Lt. Col. Andrew McManus, the deputy commander of the Joint Detention Group, which oversees detention operations. “That’s all we say about it.” When I asked if the 14 detainees at Guantanamo Bay who arrived in September 2006 from undisclosed prisons run by the CIA — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and his fellow 9/11 co-conspirators — lived in communal housing or are held in individual cells, McManus replied, “I know nothing about that whatsoever.”

A detainee jogs around the central recreation yard in Camp 4, a communal-housing facility for detainees who comply with guards’ orders. When he saw a group of reporters taking pictures of the area, he yelled out in English, “Put me beside bin Laden!” The consensus of the press corps was he was joking.

Two contrasting images from an area in Camp 4 used for holding educational classes. With the exception of the prayer mat, the recreational materials on this table — the Soduko book, the art supplies and the magazines — are comfort items provided to help “compliant” detainees at Camp 4 while away the time. In the makeshift classroom, detainees watch DVDs — some are said to be partial to Jackie Chan movies and the Alaskan fishing show “Deadliest Catch” — as well as attending art and language and “life skill” courses. But across the floor in the classroom are small metal eyebolts used to shackle detainees to their seats during the classes. “For the safety of the instructor, the detainees are shackled,” McManus explained.

Camp 6, modeled on a Michigan prison, is a $37 million facility consisting of eight blocks of 22 cells. It’s a communal-living facility, meaning detainees live with each other, although there are several cells that aren’t big enough for more than a single occupant. Here, a detainee — a slight man, maybe about 5 foot 5 — ambles over from a common area to speak amiably with a guard, who’s separated from the detainee by a schoolyard-fence style barrier. I was allowed to publish these photographs because I blurred the detainee’s faces.

This is the ceiling of a single-occupancy detainee’s cell in H Block in Camp 6, just above the toilet. I laid down on the concrete platform set up for a detainee’s bed to get a sense of what might be the last thing he sees before going to sleep at night.

Another shot from the recreation yard at Camp 4. The only towers we’re allowed to photograph are those with guards manning them, and only then if the guard’s face isn’t able to be determined. Similarly, the crouching detainee below pulled the collar of his shirt above his nose, obscuring his face enough so that a photograph of the scene could clear a security review.

We weren’t allowed inside this Camp 4 facility. While there’s no indication this behavior persists at Guantanamo, early in the detention facility’s existence, behavioral-science teams were involved in abusive interrogation and detention operations, as a Senate Armed Services Committee report in 2008 meticulously documented. There haven’t been accounts of behaviorally-enhanced interrogations for years. “We have visitors here every day of the week,” McManus said, including the International Committee of the Red Cross.

A view of the American flag through the perimeter fences around Camp 4 and Camp 5. A Toronto Star journalist remarked that it was probably the single most photographed American flag around. Then she snapped some pictures.

(1)   Expand the pilot program to fully deploy eGuardian as the DoD-wide force protection threat reporting system to handle suspicious incident activities. The eGuardian system, which is FBI-owned and maintained, will safeguard civil liberties, while enabling information sharing among Federal, State, local, and tribal law enforcement partners, including interagency fusion centers.

(2) Complete the deployment of the Law Enforcement Defense Data Exchange system (D-DEx) allowing all DoD law enforcement agencies to share criminal investigation as well as other law enforcement data as appropriate. D-DEx will be a consolidated database to enable organizations across the Department to query, retrieve, and post criminal investigation and law enforcement data in a single repository.

(3) Establish the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Americas’ Security Affairs as the DoD lead for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program.

(4) Strengthen DoD’s antiterrorism training program by incorporating lessons learned from the Fort Hood incident, Department of Homeland Security best practices on workplace violence, and civilian law enforcement active shooter awareness training.

This won’t satisfy the likes of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who wanted Muslim soldiers singled out as extremist risk threats. “I believe in racial and ethnic profiling,” Inhofe confessed during a January hearing about the Fort Hood investigation.

An adviser to Spencer Abraham of Michigan when Mr. Abraham was a senator, he has rotated in and out of government over the last two decades. He worked briefly at the politically connected Carlyle Group, a private equity firm in Washington. After the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, he became the civilian face of the coalition government, as policy adviser to the government and chief spokesman for L. Paul Bremer III, the top American administrator in Iraq.

Ben Smith runs down the reasons why team Gillibrand isn’t broadcasting a lot of fear about this bid — a neoconservative hedge fund manager has, you could say, some potential vulnerabilities in a heavily Democratic state.

A high-level Pentagon inquiry into the Fort Hood shootings that left 13 people dead has concluded that the military should focus more resources on identifying service members who might pose a threat to their colleagues and outlines a series of steps the Pentagon should take to prevent future attacks, Pentagon officials said.

According to Jaffe’s piece for The Washington Post, the report — expected to be released on Thursday — will recommend the Defense Department “to ensure that it fully staffs FBI-run Joint Terrorism Task Forces so that information collected by other government agencies about potential contacts between troops and terrorist groups is shared promptly with the Defense Department.” We’ll know more on Thursday, but it appears for now like Gen. George Casey’s call not to stigmatize American Muslim soldiers has been embraced by the panel, led by ex-Army Secretary Togo West and ret. Adm. Vern Clark. Good for them.