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MADISON - ST. CLAIR RECORD

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Lisa Madigan joins the War on Profit

Our View

What is it with some politicians and for-profit colleges? They just can't stand them.

For that matter, what is it with left-leaning politicians and profit, period? They seem to think it's a dirty word.

But profit is just the money a person earns above expenses for providing goods or services that other people want. It's an incentive, and a reward, for working with others and making a contribution to the community.

Maybe it's because they produce little of value themselves and could never make it in the private sector that some politicians have such distaste for profit, because they spend their lives feeding at the public trough on funds extracted from their constituents.

Maybe they hate for-profit colleges because they see them as a threat to public colleges, where so many loyal, anti-capitalist professors are ensconced in tenured positions, preaching to their students to vote for candidates like themselves – and where so many opportunities exist to divert taxpayer funds to pet projects and patronage.

What is the purported argument against for-profit colleges? That they cost too much, that they fail to educate students properly, that they fail to ensure well-paying jobs and satisfying careers for their graduates? Sounds like the same argument that can be made, with some justification, against so-called nonprofit private and public colleges.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) has got a bug up his arts and sciences when it comes to for-profit colleges, and so does Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan. She's joined 16 other Democrat state attorneys general in a suit against the U.S. Department of Education over its decision to block the Obama administration’s gainful employment rule, which pretends to protect students from being defrauded by for-profit colleges.

It does nothing of the sort, of course, being just another cleverly disguised trick to advantage the public sector at the expense of the private.

Maybe when she leaves office, Lisa Madigan can attend a for-profit college, preparing herself for a career that is additive to our economy, not exploitative of it.

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