A private, for-profit college chain with a dozen campuses across Florida and Texas will lose access to federal student aid. The move comes after an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) found the chain, Florida Career College, violated federal rules and failed to meet basic standards required to access federal loans and grants, NPR.org reported. "Federal Student Aid is holding Florida Career College (FCC) accountable for taking advantage of some of the most vulnerable students," FSA Chief Operating Officer Richard Cordray said in a statement. Unless a court intervenes, the move leaves FCC, which enrolled roughly 5,000 students late last year, facing an uncertain financial future. The overwhelming majority of its students depend on federal aid to attend. According to the College Scorecard, 97% of students at FCC's Tampa campus, for example, received federal loans; 97% also received a federal Pell grant for being low-income. FCC's business model is built on offering short-term certificate programs in fields such as HVAC, automotive technician, and dental assistant — often to students who did not finish high school. And this appears to be where FCC ran afoul of federal guidelines. In order for a student to receive federal student aid to help pay for a postsecondary certificate program without first graduating high school, they have to take a test, known as an ATB ("Ability-To-Benefit") Test. That test seeks "to determine whether a student who does not have a high school diploma can benefit from postsecondary education," according to the department's release. "Among other things, this protects students from ending up with debt they cannot afford." According to the Education Department, since 2018, nearly half of FCC's students have had to take the ATB test before qualifying for federal aid. But this testing process, according to the department, was often a sham. Federal investigators found that test administrators "routinely" broke the rules to help students pass, "including by filling in or changing answers after students finished their tests, helping students during testing or taking tests for them, and permitting students to use calculators in violation of testing rules."
