We know that money influences politics. But when we picture the transactions, we imagine stuffy old businessmen handing senators sacks of money to look the other way while they employ orphans in their asbestos and war profiteering factory. And while generous campaign contributions are definitely responsible for a lot of asbestos-related orphan deaths, the repercussions of letting companies influence politicians are often much less clear-cut than that. Like a butterfly in a $5,000 suit flapping its wings, the consequences of a politician wanting a payday can both be unforeseen and devastating. For instance ...

7 For-Profit Colleges Prey On Veterans Thanks To One Politician

America is a country that loves its soldiers -- right up until they come home and need services like healthcare and education. After all, helping soldiers is patriotism, but helping civilians is communism, so no wonder lawmakers are allowing veterans to get scammed into getting degrees worth less than what you can whip up in Microsoft Paint.



If you print this out and fill in your name, you are now as qualified as a DeVry graduate.

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Veterans who want to continue their education have access to the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which is great. What's not so great is that the education benefits have a loophole big enough to drive a truck loaded with outdated textbooks through. The problem lies with for-profit colleges. Those are "schools" like DeVry University and the University of Phoenix -- the type of respectable institutions whose mail always winds up in your spam folder. These diploma mills have a history of shady recruitment tactics. DeVry recently had to pay a $100 million settlement for misleading tens of thousands of students about the value of a DeVry "education" -- with those quotation marks being exactly how it must now be referred to.

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For-profit schools are especially fond of targeting veterans. Why? It's thanks to something called the 90/10 rule, which makes for-profit schools lose their federal funding if more than 90 percent of their revenue comes from federal student aid programs. This is tricky for these schools, as few parents are willing to bear the full cost of their shitty kids earning a Bachelor in Getting Scammed. However, due to a technicality, the aid veterans get from the Post-9/11 GI Bill is considered privately funded, meaning that to places like DeVry, it counts toward the 10 percent of private tuition that they need to maintain. It's like having your cake and eating it too -- which is probably a full master's program at the University of Phoenix.