Greed and self-destruction in higher education?

This from the Feb. 18th Chronicle of Higher Education:

February 18, 2011
House Votes to Cut Higher-Education Spending, Delay 'Gainful Employment' Rule

By Kelly Field

Washington

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Saturday, 235 to 189, to approve a bill that would slash spending on student aid and research and temporarily bar the Education Department from enforcing a rule that threatens the survival of some for-profit colleges.

This on the heels of a story in the Chronicle detailing the large number of leaders from higher education --- including former Ivy League presidents and former big wigs from the Department of Education --- now serving on the boards of for-profit universities.

The simple fact is that the for-profits could not survive, were it not for their ability to access federal student-loan money. The last time Uncle Sam cracked down on them and cut off access to the federal titty, many of them went into bankruptcy. That's just what would happen again, if the DOE were allowed to do the right thing... tie for-profits' access to federal funding to the ability of their graduates to obtain gainful employment, as required by the relevant federal statute. And, as DOE previously suggested --- before the lobbyists and board members swung into action --- gainful employment is inextricably tied to loan repayment rates, which for the for-profit sector are dismal.

Meanwhile, we see one of America's greatest assets --- its public school system --- being harassed and starved from top to bottom... including its great public university systems. Likewise its private non-profit colleges and universities are struggling. Higher education may well be the last sector of the American economy that remains a world-beater. But not for long at this rate.

As the for-profits co-opt higher education's leaders by placing them on their boards --- no doubt for significant compensation --- and lobby the heck out of the Congress, a great public asset, unparalleled in human history, is allowed to erode.

Have we Americans become nothing more than an agglomeration of greedy fools?