After graduating from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, Carrianne Howard hoped to find a job in the video game industry.
She did -- kind of. For $12 an hour, she worked as a recruiter for video game companies. And then her position was eliminated. So now, she's working as a stripper.
According to Bloomberg, Howard spent $70,000 on her degree from the for-profit Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, the parent company of which is owned in part by Goldman Sachs. She told Bloomberg that upon a pre-enrollment visit to the school, a campus tour guide "made it sound like [she] was going to make hundreds of thousands of dollars."
Howard's story is not entirely unique -- and experiences like hers are driving the government's investigation into the efficacy and recruiting practices of for-profit colleges.
This week, a Government Accountability Office report detailed how for-profit recruiters often promise potential students unobtainable jobs and high salaries, and tell them to lie to procure more federal financial aid.
At a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing on the report Wednesday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) slammed for-profit institutions, saying that the report made it "disturbingly clear that abuses in for-profit recruiting are not limited to a few rogue recruiters or even a few schools with lax oversight."
In July, the Education Department put forth a set of regulations for for-profit colleges that would force them to prove that they placed students in worthy jobs after graduation and that their students were able to pay down debt.
Some officials in opposition to the regulations say they will make college less accessible. According to the Associated Press, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) called them "a surprisingly wacky proposal."
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