“Educating Sgt. Pantzke,” FRONTLINE’s investigative report about the for-profit college industry’s recruitment of veterans, is cited in a Sept. 23 New York Times op-ed and Time Magazine blog post for exposing the worst of these colleges’ marketing tactics.
The issues raised by “Educating Sgt. Pantzke” are currently the subject of Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearings. In his opening statement to the committee on Sept. 22, Ted L. Daywalt, CEO and President of VetJobs, said that the film “highlighted the problem veterans’ face when attending predatory for-profit educational institutions.”
In the Times, op-ed author Hollister K. Petraeus, assistant director for service member affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (and wife of general David Petraeus), argues that “personnel and their families are finding themselves under siege from for-profit colleges,” who use deception and sometimes outright lies to win veterans’ hard-earned tuition stipends. In particular, she mentions an incident, recounted on FRONTLINE, in which a college recruiter at the Marine barracks at Camp Lejeune, N.C. worked to recruit veterans suffering from significant brain injuries.
On Time’s Battleland blog, Ron Capps, a 25-year military veteran and current director of the Veterans Writing Project, discusses the lack of support networks at these colleges for veterans troubled by PTSD, TBI and other combat-related ailments explored in “Pantzke.”
For a news update on the Senate hearings, please visit Gretchen Gavett’s report on FRONTLINE’s webpage. Click here to watch “Educating Sergeant Pantzke.”
