Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the

collision of tech, business, and politics. I'm Dan Premack. On today's show, Sirius XM is paying

billions to buy Pandora and the big way that Apple's new television shows will be different than what

you see on Netflix or HBO.

But first, rolling back the rules on for-profit colleges.

So last week marked the 10-year anniversary of the start of the Great Recession.

And one of the underreported stories from that era was how it sparked this massive increase

in people going to college and other types of secondary education.

Basically, folks either couldn't find jobs or thought they wouldn't be able to find jobs,

so they took themselves out of the running for a couple of years,

hoping they'd return to the workforce at a better time with more skills.

So some of the increase went to traditional graduate school programs like law schools or med schools

and community colleges, but the vast

majority was new enrollment in for-profit colleges. In fact, the number of for-profit students

more than doubled between 2006 and 2010, topping out at over two million. So for a lot of these

students, it worked out as planned, but for many others, it didn't. They piled up loads of

debt for what ultimately became worthless degrees, or at least degrees that didn't lead to the

sorts of jobs that paid off the loans. Basically, the schools misrepresented what they could do

for people. The Obama administration reacted to this by implementing new rules that led to the

shutdown of certain for-profit schools and debt forgiveness for thousands of students.

But current Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has been trying to roll back some of those regulations,

basically arguing that they unfairly target for-profit schools.

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