Dick Durbin: “this week I was pleased to be joined by my Republican colleague from Louisiana, Senator Bill Cassidy, to introduce the…”

“this week I was pleased to be joined by my Republican colleague from Louisiana, Senator Bill Cassidy, to introduce the Foreign Medical School Accountability Fairness Act. I appreciate Senator Cassidy's leadership on this issue and his willingness to work across the aisle. We were joined across the Capitol by Representatives Michael Burgess and Elijah Cummings, who introduced a House companion bill today. This bipartisan, common-sense bill fixes a loophole in Federal law used by for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean to gain access to Federal education dollars without meeting the same requirements as other foreign medical schools. Under current law, a small number of medical schools--about six, four of which are for-profits--are exempt from meeting the same requirements to qualify for Title IV funding that all other medical schools outside of the U.S. and Canada must meet. This loophole allows these schools to enroll large percentages of American students--which means access to more federal dollars. The biggest of these schools are for-profits--St. George's, Ross, and American University of the Caribbean whose enrollments of Americans are 91 percent, 83 percent, and 86 percent respectively. Other schools are prohibited from having U.S. citizens or U.S. permanent residents make up more than 40 percent of enrollment.…”