For-Profit Colleges Target the Military

U.S. Marine Corporal James Long knows he's enrolled at Ashford University. He just can't remember what course he's taking. The 22-year-old from Dalton, Ga., suffered a traumatic brain injury, impairing his ability to concentrate, when artillery shells hit his Humvee in Iraq in 2006. He signed up for Ashford, one of at least a dozen for-profit colleges making money off active-duty military with subsidies from American taxpayers, after its recruiter gave a sales pitch this year at a barracks housing the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

Long isn't alone. Ashford ranked sixth in Marine Corps enrollment in the year ended Sept. 30, 2009, with 1,018 students. At Camp Lejeune, Ashford had 119 active-duty students, up from 25 the previous year, and 6 in fiscal 2007.