Sen. Kelly Ayotte returned campaign donations from a for-profit college chain under investigation by the Justice Department. Sen. Marco Rubio took fire in the presidential primary because he asked regulators to go easy on a chain that later collapsed after a federal fraud investigation. And Hillary Clinton’s been facing questions about her husband’s $17.5 million payout as “honorary chancellor” for global for-profit Laureate Education.

For years, politicians from both parties have extolled the virtues of for-profit colleges, often after the education companies poured millions into campaign coffers, paid them to speak or put them on the payroll. The relationships often helped the industry escape deep regulatory scrutiny and thrive on a steady pipeline of federal student-aid funds.


But now, after the high-profile collapse of several big companies, mounting evidence that low-income students are being left with mountains of unpayable debt, and investigations of outrageous practices at some schools, the industry is facing a day of reckoning — and so are the politicians who’ve supported it.

At the top of the ticket, Clinton and Donald Trump are both defending their associations with for-profit education ventures. The issue is also tarnishing Senate GOP incumbents in key races who took money from or invested in the schools, whether or not those particular companies are embroiled in scandal.

“The whiff of scandal has become the same as scandal,” said Kevin Kinser, a Penn State University professor who studies for-profit education. “In very different races, in different parts of the country, these points are being raised without much ability to push back and say no, no, no, these are legitimate businesses that we’re working with here.”

It’s “telling in terms of how the perception of for-profits has taken such a big hit in the last few years,” Kinser said.

With help from lobbyists and friendly lawmakers, the for-profit industry boomed following the 2008 recession as students flooded into their schools in search of career training, enrolling more than 2.4 million students at its 2010 peak. But as reports of abuses mounted, the Obama administration and state attorneys general began cracking down on the industry, which relies mostly on federal student loans and Pell grants for revenue. Liberals such as Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Sherrod Brown also aggressively embraced it as a consumer-protection issue.

Federal and state officials have been going after the schools for overly aggressive recruiting, advertising falsified job-placement rates and luring students into high-interest private loans. The large Corinthian Colleges chain collapsed last year amid allegations of fraud and mismanagement. That was followed by last week’s collapse of ITT Tech after the Education Department cut off its access to federal student aid for new students. Both had tens of thousands of students on campuses around the country.

The industry’s growing problems are reverberating on the campaign trail.

It's now rare to see candidates openly advocate for the industry, as Mitt Romney did in 2012 when he encouraged students to attend for-profit colleges — including Full Sail University, which was run by a major donor to his campaign. This cycle, as the GOP struggles to hold onto control of the Senate, two of their most endangered incumbents are on the defensive about their ties to for-profit chains.

Ayotte on June 30 returned $8,000 in donations to Bridgepoint Education, a for-profit chain with about 50,000 students. The campaign of Ayotte’s opponent, Gov. Maggie Hassan, has called Bridgepoint a “Trump-Style” university that “targets veterans, single parents and the elderly.”

Bridgepoint revealed nearly two weeks later that the Justice Department was investigating whether it violated a federal law capping the amount of funding that for-profit colleges are allowed to receive from the Education Department. And on Monday, the company agreed to pay an $8 million civil penalty, and discharge more than $23 million in student loans, to resolve the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s claims that it misleadingly marketed its private student loans to students.

"This is just another false attack from Hassan and her Washington allies. Our campaign returned these contributions as soon as we knew about the problems with this group,” said Liz Johnson, an Ayotte campaign spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, in the battleground state of Pennsylvania, Sen. Pat Toomey’s small investment in and previous membership on the board of a now-defunct online education venture called Yorktown University barely garnered attention in his first race in 2010.

But this year, Toomey’s Democratic opponent, Katie McGinty, held a media call with reporters to showcase his ties to it. Toomey’s campaign has called his involvement “minimal.”

National Democrats say they expect in upcoming weeks to highlight the thousands of dollars in donations that Sens. Richard Burr, Rob Portman and Roy Blunt, too, got from the industry.

Campaigns for Portman and Blunt issued statements defending the senators’ work on education. Blunt’s campaign spokeswoman said he opposed an Obama administration rule setting standards for for-profit colleges because it was “set with zero input from Congress."

Jesse Hunt, a Burr spokesman, deflected any criticism of the senator’s ties to for-profit colleges, saying in a statement that his Democratic challenger Deborah Ross "will do or say anything to avoid having to explain her dangerous record as the top lobbyist for the ACLU.”

It’s not just Republicans taking heat. In California’s Senate race featuring Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Loretta Sanchez — two Democrats — the candidates attacked each other late last week for supporting for-profit ventures.

The issue has reached the top of the ticket.

Clinton has criticized for-profit schools and pledged to go further than the Obama administration in policing them. But she’s also faced criticism for her husband’s big payout from Laureate Education.

Several months after he joined Laureate’s payroll in April 2010, an industry association paid Bill Clinton $175,000 to speak at its annual conference in Las Vegas. Clinton praised the industry during his remarks, according to a report at the time.

“Secretary Clinton has been consistent in her position that all for-profit institutions should be held to the same standards and she will crack down on law-breaking for-profits by expanding support for federal regulators to enforce laws against deceptive marketing, fraud and other illegal practices,” said Josh Schwerin, a Clinton campaign spokesman.

Meanwhile, Trump has been facing questions about Trump University. It wasn’t actually a traditional for-profit college able to accept federal aid, but instead a real estate seminar venture that’s now facing fraud lawsuits on both coasts. The slew of students who say they were victimized by the educational venture, though, has fueled lines of attack against Trump for much of the presidential campaign. Trump’s lawyers are fighting to prevent the release of video depositions that the Republican presidential nominee gave in connection with the ongoing litigation.

Trump’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, but Trump has defended the venture. “The people that took the course all signed — most — many — many signed report cards saying it was fantastic, it was wonderful, it was beautiful,” he said earlier this year.

The scandals have also dampened lawmakers’ advocacy for the industry in Washington. David Halperin, a lawyer and long-time critic of the industry, said champions for for-profits aren’t as vocal as they used to be. He noted, for example, that when Rubio defended now-collapsed Corinthian Colleges in 2014, he supported it in a letter to the Education Department — not out front at a press conference.

Nonetheless, Rubio’s critics dug out the letter and used it against him. Even a Breitbart headline crowed about Rubio’s “own for-profit education scandal” in reference to the letter.

A spokesman for the association representing for-profit colleges, the Career Education Colleges and Universities, declined to comment for this story.

Viveca Novak, a spokeswoman for the Center for Responsive Politics, said even as the issue becomes more of a political liability, the colleges’ need to peddle influence won’t go away.

“They aren’t going to stop being involved in Washington. In fact, I would be surprised if they didn’t ramp up their operations a bit more,” Novak said.

Indeed, there are still high-profile advocates for the industry.

Sen. John McCain has long been a top recipient of campaign contributions from the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit college, which may soon be owned in part by a private investment firm with close ties to President Barack Obama. In an interview with POLITICO this summer, he blamed the administration’s hard-charging regulatory approach for helping to drive down the company’s stock price and contributing to its decision to sell.

“I know it was the attacks that drove the stock price down,” McCain said. “It’s very clear.”

Meanwhlie, even after Ayotte returned its campaign contributions, Bridgepoint strengthened its Washington connections by hiring former GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole, a World War II veteran, to lobby on veterans’ issues as the chain faces regulatory scrutiny over its ability to accept GI Bill funds.

In the past, for-profit chains have also hired powerful lobbyists like Lanny Davis, former counsel to Bill Clinton, and former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Dick Gephardt.

“They’ve always had a lot of resources to hire the most expensive lobbyists and law firms,” Halperin said.