ITT Technical Institute is one of the most prominent for-profit schools in the country.
It's been in business for decades, but has now received a harsh blow in the form of sanctions from the U.S. Department of Education.
As a result, the school announced on their website that they will no longer enroll new students into their programs.
ITT spokeswoman Nancy Elam confirmed that with KPCC saying, "We have voluntarily [suspended] all new enrollments as we assess our options."
For more, Ben Miller.
He's the Senior Director for Post-secondary Education at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress. He says this has been a long time coming for ITT.
"What we see is that as far back as 2013, you had organizations like the Security and Exchange Commission starting to poke around and raise questions," Miller told Take Two's Alex Cohen. "We saw in 2014 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sue ITT for concerns that it was engaging in predatory lending. Essentially, no matter where you look someone's looking into this company and raising serious red flags about it."
In addition to preventing ITT from taking federal aid for tuition, the Department of Education says the institution must increase its reserves from $94.4 million to $247.3 million.
Miller says, "Essentially it's going to have to pay off a lot of additional money to the government." And without new students to help finance that, it could be a tall order.
According to Miller, this is a sign that the government is cracking down on for-profit schools.
"I think what we're seeing is that the bottom is really falling out for the worst actors in the private for-profit space," he says. "I think the question now is ... for the other schools that may have been doing something similar, can they clean up their act in time to avoid further scrutiny or will they be facing something like this next?"
To hear the full conversation, click the blue player above.