Hm.
An “obscure provision tucked into the budget-reconciliation bill …would cut off … student loans” to three Caribbean for-profit medical schools that cater to Americans, among them the one on Grenada that was in the news during the Reagan years, when we invaded the island.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) offered the language as part of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee’s contribution to the massive budget bill. As House and Senate negotiators inch toward a conference agreement on the legislation, the three foreign-based medical schools are furiously working to protect a lucrative stream of federal funding.
According to DeVry Inc., the for-profit education company that owns Ross University School of Medicine on the island of Dominica, St. George’s [on Grenada], Ross and the American University of the Caribbean on St. Maarten provide medical education to more than 3,500 American students who return to the United States after their studies to practice medicine.
According to Sessions, these schools are tantamount to diploma mills that were “created to serve American students who cannot get into American medical schools.”
[Sessions] wants to transfer the loan money that their students currently receive to students at medical schools on U.S. soil.
“We are working desperately to maintain a strong student-loan program,” Sessions told The Hill [a Washington newspaper]. “You need to ask yourself what your priorities are,” he said.
“I’m of the strong view that we need to be thinking about how to improve our own, world-class medical schools,” Sessions said.
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