Why?

Why is the federal government still supporting for-profit "universities" which are nothing more than degree mills?

Quite honestly, Arne Duncan supports basically the same thing with K-12 education with supporting the movement to turn public schools into charters.

Same damned thing. Both are worthless and unnecessary.

Unfortunately, this isn't a scam that only targets the young and naive. The for-profit industry is so rife with deceit, it has been billed as the second coming of the mortgage-loan debacle. And the same people are behind it. Three-quarters of all for-profit students are enrolled at schools owned by Wall Street banks and private-equity firms.

All told, they soak $30 billion a year from American taxpayers. But even in the age of slash-and-burn government, Congress has shown no interest in stopping it.

"The problem with the subprime [housing] scam was that it got so big, it almost brought down the entire world's economy," says Barmak Nassirian, a former official with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. "This one's wisely limited to $30 billion a year, which is highly sustainable. In the context of a multitrillion federal budget, that's not even a rounding error."

The schools need to be shut down or at least no longer receive federal money, but our politicians are so corrupted by donations they won't do one damned thing about it.

Meanwhile, students are drowning in debt from which they can never escape unless they die.