We Closed the 90/10 Loophole!!  It took a decade of our advocacy, speaking out, and mobilizing our allies and individual defrauded veterans, but we finally closed the 90/10 loophole!  The House of Representatives approved the loophole closure on March 10, 2021, following the Senate’s bipartisan agreement on March 6, 2021, to close the loophole while delaying its implementation.

GI Bill Student Protections: We work hard to protect GI Bill students. We’re grateful for Congress’ unanimous passage of our ideas in a major new law in 2020 to ensure key GI Bill student protections and better college oversight. It requires risk-based reviews of colleges and stops VA approval of fake law schools and any college cut off by the Education Department or an accreditor. It stops predatory college recruiting including by the third-party “lead generator” websites colleges contract with. It requires schools, not veterans, to repay VA’s tuition overpayments and prevents overpayments from happening by requiring schools to re-verify veterans’ enrollment after the add/drop period and veterans to re-verify enrollment each month. It requires schools to give accurate information to veterans. It also ensures veterans get their GI Bill restored if their school closes or is disapproved (an important expansion of our 2017 law to restore GI Bill for veterans at ITT Tech, Corinthian, and some other shuttered colleges). And it extends in-state tuition for all veterans, regardless of state residency. And the work continues. In 2022, we worked with Congress to unanimously pass a law to strengthen and streamline the requirement that college programs not be wholly dependent on GI Bill funds and another law requiring unaccredited programs to have real faculty and other common-sense basics.

Impactful Research and Policy Reports: We publish nonpartisan research and policy reports, documenting student veterans’ outcomes and loan data, GI Bill usage and financing, failures by VA to follow federal statutory requirements, specific illegal practices by predatory colleges, and more. Our reports are well-regarded and get results. For example, our 2022 report on veterans with student loans they never authorized or wanted received immediate attention from the U.S. Department of Education, which thereafter sent a warning advisory to all colleges and universities nationwide. Some of our reports have led to unanimous Congressional laws to fix the problems we identify, including our 2019 series of reports on failed VA oversight of colleges, which led to the Protect the GI BIll Act, and our 2016 report, “The GI Bill Pays for Degrees That Do Not Lead to a Job,” which led to this law.

Exposing and Stopping College Fraud: We frequently expose college fraud through our research papers and investigative work. For example, our lawyers uncovered a scam and carefully documented it for VA lawyers, leading to an FBI raid, GI Bill cut-off, and the Feds seizing the church’s bank accounts to recoup stolen GI Bill funds. We also are proud to play a role behind the scenes helping law enforcement crack down on illegal fraud by bad actor colleges. Our work exposing deceptive recruiting helped the Federal Trade Commission obtain – for students – nearly $200 million from the University of Phoenix and $100 million from DeVry, and led the Commission to shut down several scam websites targeting veterans and a pay-to-play company touting “military-friendly schools.” We actively support state Attorneys General with their crackdowns on illegal school practices. If you’re a whistleblower with information to share, contact us.  We have a great track record of protecting whistleblowers and helping them expose the truth.

School Closure Benefits Restoration: The devastating trend of school closures continues to negatively affect student veterans, leaving them with questions about their GI Bill benefits. We worked with Congress to pass two laws — first, in 2017, a law to restore GI Bill benefits to veterans who were enrolled when ITT Tech and Corinthian colleges collapsed, and then, in 2020, a law to extend that restoration to any veteran attending any college that suddenly closed. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) inappropriately set a requirement for veterans to have transferred to a new school before seeing what their benefits eligibility might be. We urged VA to fix this. However, when they didn’t, we went to Congress and got a unanimously-passed law (the Veterans Eligible to Transfer School Credit Act (HR 6604) that ensures veterans can get their GI Bill benefits “restored” before they pick a new school.

Disabled Veterans’ Legal Rights: In 2019, we forced the US Education Department to follow the law and grant 100% disabled veterans’ student loan forgiveness. Our Freedom of Information Act request exposed the truth that the Education Department was denying 100% disabled veterans their legal rights and had wrongly put half of them in default. We mobilized public pressure on the Education Department, including generating negative media stories, veterans’ letters, a letter from 51 state Attorneys General, bipartisan Congressional pressure, and the threat of a lawsuit. And we won!

Ethics Law for VA Employees: When VA proposed to waive federal ethics rules to allow VA employees to receive gifts, dividends, stock, salaries, and more from for-profit colleges, we organized a massive pushback by bipartisan national ethics leaders, veterans organizations, consumer and education organizations, and the VA employees union. We forced VA to back down.  Bipartisan members of Congress then worked with us on a bipartisan – and unanimous – new law to fix the problem.

Career Ready Student Veterans Act of 2016: When we published a groundbreaking report, “The GI Bill Pays for Degrees That Do Not Lead to a Job,” bipartisan members of Congress paid attention and passed a law – with unanimous votes in both the House and Senate – to stop colleges that leave veterans ineligible to get a license to work in the promised field.

Quality Improvements for Defense Department Tuition Assistance: We thank Congress for listening to our quality concerns and enacting quality requirements for colleges that participate in the Defense Department Tuition Assistance. We also thank DOD for working with us on careful rules for schools.

Helping 5,000 Veterans Get Their Legal Rights – And Speak Out: We have provided free legal services and college counseling to 5,000 veterans and service members – and counting!  In 2020 alone we helped ~450 veterans get their legal rights. We also help them speak up so policymakers understand the reality on the ground. We’ve brought nearly 100 student veterans to Washington where we’ve helped them testify before Congress and the Education Department, speak on our Congressional panels, meet with VA and news reporters, and more. We also help them meet with their elected officials in their home district offices.  We’re helping policymakers understand student veterans and change the law to help them.  Many Members of Congress have said our meetings really opened their eyes – and it’s helped change how they vote.

Stopping Bad Legislation: We often work behind the scenes to stop bad bills. We mobilized a major effort to kill a 2018 bill by the House Education Committee that would have removed student protections and college quality requirements while pushing federal student aid towards law-breaking colleges, and we led the effort to kill a 2016 bill that would have allowed predatory colleges’ unfettered access to military bases.

COVID Relief:  When Coronavirus hit in Spring 2020, we worked with Congress to quickly pass 2 laws to give VA-supported students the same rights as other students, including no change to their GI Bill enrollment and housing allowance even as colleges moved classes online, and to keep students’ work study funds flowing. We also worked to ensure COVID student relief from the Education Department included student veterans.

2012 Executive Order: Principles of Excellence: We are proud to have proposed, helped draft, and built support for a 2012 Executive Order establishing principles of excellence for colleges serving veterans and military-connected students.