Dick Durbin: “I am very concerned about section 563 in the Senate-passed fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act related…”

“I am very concerned about section 563 in the Senate-passed fiscal year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act related to access by institutions of higher education, IHE, to military installations purportedly for advising and support services. The provision opens the floodgates to military bases and servicemembers for for-profit college recruiters. It guts the President's Principles of Excellence Executive order meant to protect servicemembers from aggressive or abusive recruiting practices on military installations by requiring that an IHE be granted access to a military installation if it has entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Defense, DOD, and has been approved to provide services by the installation's educational service officer. Regardless of other factors which may be of concern to DOD-- investigations and lawsuits, infractions of the MOU, etc.--if an IHE convinces a base's educational service officer to grant them access, there is nothing DOD can do to stop it. In addition, the provision provides preferential treatment to IHE's that enroll large proportions of servicemembers. Providing access to installations based on how many servicemembers an IHE enrolls instead of the actual needs of the servicemembers at those installations does nothing to help improve services for enrolled servicemembers. Instead, it further entrenches the big for-profit players whose business models rely heavily on servicemembers.…”