A college closed, upending one veteran’s life. Two years later, he’s still rebuilding.

LAS VEGAS – Kendrick Harrison served the country in the Army, and the 38-year-old hoped the country would serve him in turn.

It seemed like a fair trade.

Harrison had been given opportunities to enroll in college straight out of high school. But propelled by his family legacy and civic duty, he enlisted in the military instead. A mortar attack robbed him of his physical health, but he wasn’t worried. The military would pay for his education. His body might be injured, but his mind worked. Or that’s what he hoped.

Harrison says he quickly learned the sense of duty and care he felt toward the country wasn’t reciprocal.

It was bad enough that the college he had chosen, Argosy University, closed months before he’d earn his degrees in psychology and business, leaving Harrison indebted, unemployed and even further removed from a yearslong dream to get his degree. What was worse was that no one from the government or his university seemed interested in helping him navigate the fallout of the sudden closure of the college.

His story is a stark example of what critics call a breakdown in the rules intended to protect students – and U.S. taxpayers – from the predation of for-profit schools. These schools weathered COVID-19 shutdowns, and in some cases thrived, aided by lax oversight from the Department of Education under President Donald Trump. On average, students who attend these institutions pay more and graduate at a lower rate than students at public or private nonprofit colleges, .

Even the promise of more scrutiny under President Joe Biden hasn’t helped students such as Harrison, who can spend years navigating the bureaucracy’s tangled rules to discharge loans, transfer credits and rebuild fractured finances. There's no accounting for the time they lost in school and outside the workforce. Nontraditional students with little experience navigating the college landscape are especially vulnerable to these groups’ aggressive recruitment tactics.

The wounded soldier remains incredulous about what happened to him, likening Argosy’s actions to theft. Maybe colleges steal from people in other countries, but here?

“This is the America I fought (for) and defended,” Harrison said. “That belief in our system, it cost me and my family our home.”

College promises made long ago

Coming out of Fontana High School in California, Harrison entertained offers to play football in college, but his mind was set on serving. His father and stepfather were Army vets. His grandfather served in the Coast Guard, his uncle in the Navy. The promise of a free ride to college with the GI Bill after he completed his service sealed the deal.

Harrison served in the Signal Corps, a branch of the Army focused on battlefield communication. In Iraq in 2005, a mortar struck his unit. Metal cut through his torso and arm, tearing his rotator cuff. His doctors warned that his injuries, which included damage to his shoulder and knees, might make a full recovery impossible. Though he has worked off and on since leaving the service, Harrison is eligible for disability from the federal government, and that income has sustained the family in recent months. Harrison carries small but prominent scarring on his arm.

The Army gave him a choice: Do a different job or leave the service. Harrison chose the latter, saying, “It’s hard to be reliable when you can’t rely on your body.”

Back stateside, Harrison found work with a manufacturing company in upstate New York. He and his wife, Michelle, had three children. A growing family and dawning realization of limited prospects without a degree brought to mind his late grandfather.

Harrison was in Iraq in 2005 when he learned his grandfather was in hospice care. It was OK, his grandfather said, if Harrison couldn’t make it home, but he stressed that he wanted his grandson to get an education, so he wouldn't have to be a “grunt.” Harrison listened. He knew it would be a challenge, especially later in his life with a wife and children at home.

“It was something I felt would improve our lives in the end,” Harrison said. “And keep those promises I made to myself long ago.”

No one in Harrison’s immediate family had ever been to college. If they had, they could have helped him in his search. Instead, Harrison turned to Google and quickly stumbled across a college recruitment site. He filled out a form online, and within a day, someone from Argosy reached out to him.

Soon, he was taking multiple calls a day from representatives from the for-profit college. The hard sell was no accident.

‘Start next month’

For-profit colleges serve a special niche in America’s higher education landscape. Many are focused on trades such as cosmetology or welding, and they produce many of the nation’s nurses. They can provide an accessible education to students who might not have the time or academic background to study at a traditional university.

On average, students who graduate from these institutions earn less, carry more debt and are less likely to graduate, according to data from the federal government analyzed by USA TODAY. (Many studies have documented the worse-than-average outcomes of these colleges.)

Under President Barack Obama, the federal government issued a suite of rules meant to protect students from lackluster programs, but the Education Department under Trump and Secretary Betsy DeVos blunted or undid many of those protections.

The phone calls Harrison received from Argosy were not unusual. Part of the for-profits’ success is tied to their online offerings – and to their recruitment efforts.

The pandemic offered an opportunity to see how quickly these institutions could fine-tune their marketing to appeal to people who lost their jobs.

The sudden shift to online instruction with an interminable end hampered many colleges’ ability to recruit and retain students. Community colleges suffered the most and saw a decline in their student populations of nearly 10% in the fall semester, but for-profit colleges saw an increase of about 5%, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. That uptick is especially notable because enrollment had been falling for years at these institutions in the aftermath of high-profile failures of places such as ITT Tech or Corinthian Colleges in the mid-2010s.

An analysis of online advertising by the Century Foundation found one for-profit college – Strayer University – poured nearly $10 million into ads in the first three months of the pandemic. Its weekly spending quadrupled in July, the think tank found.

Strayer wasn't alone. The 10 largest for-profit colleges tweaked their advertising message to emphasize how easy getting a degree from their institution would be, according to a USA TODAY analysis of marketing data from SpyFu, a company that tracks advertising on Google’s search engine result.

These colleges pitched free applications and promised to accept transferred credits. After lockdown – and the record unemployment that followed – they highlighted how easy enrollment could be.

For example, the term “start next month” appeared the most among more than 200,000 marketing terms analyzed by USA TODAY. It easily surpassed “earn your degree,” which had been the top term before March 2020.

The surge in enrollment at for-profit colleges was more than just clever marketing.

While millions were left jobless by the pandemic, prospective students needed a quick program to get back into the workforce, and most for-profit colleges had vibrant online options, according to Jason Altmire, CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, a trade group of mostly for-profit institutions.

Harrison knew little about the differences between for-profit and other colleges when he was considering schools in the mid-2010s. Recruiters from Argosy helped him sort out his Free Application for Federal Student Aid and his paperwork to direct the GI Bill funding. He didn’t think about how little they talked about the courses he would take.

Any doubts he had about the program were allayed by two factors: The college was accredited, and the Veterans Affairs Department was willing to sign the paperwork that would allow the institution to receive his GI Bill money.

‘A disservice for students’

Harrison knew something was amiss almost from the beginning. When he enrolled in Argosy’s online program, the university’s staff convinced him to take out student loans on top of his GI Bill, but Harrison wouldn’t see that money directly.

Generally, the federal government distributes students’ financial aid to universities. Those institutions subtract the cost of the education and distribute what remains to students who can use that money to cover rent, books or other costs.

It’s a complicated system but one used by most universities. Harrison’s first check was late. Harrison had to repeatedly email and call his financial aid counselor to get the money.

The delayed payments and bureaucratic back-and-forth became a recurring feature for the next three years. In February 2019, he sent another email pleading with the university to release his money.

“I believe it to be a disservice for students to have to worry more about their finances than earning their degree,” he wrote. “As a student this has caused me a great deal of anxiety and undue stress. This situation has severely impacted my course work and ability to produce quality and meaningful assignments.”

It didn’t work.

The financial headache might have been worth the trouble if the education was stellar, but the classroom experience disappointed, too. Harrison had never been to college before, but even so he felt his courses were too easy.

His coursework often involved no more than running simple Google searches or watching YouTube videos. He recalled taking a required math aptitude test. He fared poorly on it, but he didn’t know why. When he questioned the low mark, the university simply bumped the grade up. He felt that his daughter’s high school classwork was more rigorous than his.

Harrison wasn’t aware of the trouble Argosy was having behind the scenes. Education Management Corp. had sold the Argosy schools in 2017 to Dream Center, a Christian charity group with no experience managing colleges.

By the end of 2018, students reported they hadn’t gotten the student aid payments they were promised. In 2019, the Education Department cut off federal student loans and grants. That effectively killed Argosy, which, like many for-profits, relied on federal financing to stay afloat even more than their nonprofit or public peers.

Harrison didn’t know the safeguards he’d depended on were not as solid as they appeared. For example, the Veterans Affairs Department doesn’t track how well a university prepares its students for the workforce, said Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success. Her advocacy group successfully urged Congress this year to heighten the standards the VA uses for overseeing programs.

Veterans Affairs suggests students review the College Scorecard, run by the Education Department. The online tool provides universities’ graduation rates, cost, demographics and other metrics.

Though the accreditation process is overseen by the federal government, it's managed by independent agencies with differing levels of scrutiny. One federally approved accreditor oversaw the high-profile closures of three for-profit colleges in the mid-2010s. That accreditor faces the loss of its federal approval, though it is still operating.

Argosy’s accreditor, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, didn’t have a history of approving troubled institutions. In June 2018, it approved the university’s operations. It wasn’t until January 2019 that the accreditor put the university on probation, but by that point, a judge had installed a receiver to manage its operations.

It can be difficult for anyone to predict whether a college will close. And the pandemic probably hastened the demise of colleges on the brink of financial collapse. But the federal government maintains a list of colleges whose financial health warrants monitoring. It’s called heightened cash monitoring, and though it’s not a guaranteed predictor of a university’s future, it can provide students with more information about the college they may invest thousands of dollars in.

Accreditors are supposed to track what corrective actions they have taken toward universities. That information may not be on a university’s website, but students can usually visit an accreditor’s website directly.

Accreditors will usually put universities on probation or take similar corrective actions, but in extreme cases, they withdraw their stamp of approval. If that happens, an institution loses access to federal money – which, in the case of a for-profit college, often means an imminent closure. Universities can appeal these findings and may not always put that information front and center on their website.

‘There’s no making me whole’

When Argosy shut down in March 2019, Harrison was three months shy of getting his degree. The school’s closure meant an end to the loan money that paid for the family’s expenses. Harrison couldn’t pay rent, and he and his family would be homeless.

“My youngest daughter, that was the only home she had ever lived in,” he said. “It’s one of those things where you get something ripped from you. And it’s not because you’re doing anything wrong.”

A photographer commissioned by The Chronicle of Higher Education documented the family's relocation, the hurried packing, the eating on tarps on the floor. The damage continued to permeate their lives. Harrison's daughter Sierra gave up basketball because they moved out of her high school's district. Harrison had been running a nonprofit group focused on community athletics, and that also ended.

There were subtle effects too. Sierra recalled watching what her father went through in trying to earn his bachelor’s degree. As she neared the end of her studies in high school, she wondered: Would the same thing happen to her if she went to college? That apprehension has waned. She has been accepted at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and she applied to Georgetown University in Washington.

The hardest decision, Harrison said, was giving up care of their nephews. Michelle’s sister died unexpectedly in 2010. The family took on her children when they were toddlers. They were present when the family was evicted.

The family doesn’t speak about them much, though their children asked about them often after they first left. In the shuffle of friends’ homes and hotel rooms, the family never had enough room or beds for everyone. It seemed best that the two boys stay together and that they live with their grandparents on their father’s side. Harrison said he questions whether he made the right choice, but he recalls asking himself, “How long can we do this before we all sink?”

“Who has to make that decision?” he asked. “There’s no making me whole on that.”

The rules that might have helped Harrison and other students recover from Argosy’s closure had been weakened under DeVos’ tenure at the Education Department. That included a policy meant to discharge the student loan debt of students who had attended colleges that defrauded them. Borrowers have to file for this forgiveness, and it’s up to the department to approve or deny the application.

In practice, the department under DeVos dragged its feet on reviewing borrowers’ claims. It took a class-action lawsuit to force the department to act, then it rushed to clear tens of thousands of claims in 2020. DeVos introduced a byzantine system of loan relief. Some might qualify for a full discharge of their loans, or they could receive nothing.

Harrison applied to have his loans forgiven, claiming the university failed to prepare him for a job. He said Argosy misrepresented how much the program would cost and none of his credits would transfer to other institutions.

In its response in June 2020, the Education Department said his claims lacked sufficient evidence, and he remained responsible for repayment of the loans.

Biden vowed greater federal scrutiny of for-profit colleges, but it may take years to replace all the rules adopted under DeVos and Trump. In March, the Education Department ditched the DeVos-era rule that offered tiered levels of loan forgiveness based on borrowers’ earnings and debt. Instead, the department completely forgave the debt of 72,000 borrowers who proved they were defrauded by their college.

That relief didn’t extend to Harrison who hadn’t been able to prove a claim. (Harrison was able to discharge his loans by applying through a separate program meant for borrowers with disabilities. He is still appealing his original case because he would like access to federal student loans should he return to college.)

A degree of relief

Harrison still hopes to get a college degree. He applied at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he’d been studying mostly online since Argosy closed. (He has paused his studies to focus on the family's move to the East Coast.) Almost none of the credits he earned at Argosy would transfer to the public university. Though for-profits may advertise that they will accept transfer credits, they can’t say whether their credits will transfer anywhere else.

That leaves him feeling like he’s starting over – after having spent all of his GI Bill benefits. He tells himself it could be worse. He’s been able to rely on groups such as Veterans Education Success and the Student Legal Defense Network to help navigate the fallout from Argosy’s closure. He’s found a sense of purpose in speaking out about the perils of for-profit colleges and the rules that failed to protect him. In early April, he spoke at a roundtable alongside U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

Some good news came after the family moved to the Washington area. Michelle was accepted into Georgetown University’s extension program for liberal studies. She wants to work in the medical field.

On a warm and bright spring day in April, the Harrisons took their four children to tour the campus. Around them, young people in masks read books or lounged on the wide green lawns.

They paused for pictures in front of Healy Hall, a massive academic building built in the late 1870s at the university’s entrance. For a moment, it was easy for Harrison to imagine looking forward to the graduation ceremony they would attend one day.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association's Reporting Fellowship.

Contributing: Matt Wynn

Correction: A previous version of this story gave the incorrect name for the owner of Brightwood College. The now-defunct college was owned by Education Corporation of America, a different group than the one that owned Argosy University.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Online college promised Army veteran a future but left him homeless