Sheep-skinning vets

Probe Phoenix’s military $$: Sen.

The University of Phoenix’s ability to recruit veterans should be halted pending an investigation of its cozy relationship with the Pentagon, an influential lawmaker wrote in a letter on Tuesday.

Sen. Dick Durbin (DIll.), an outspoken critic of forprofit colleges like Phoenix, told Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter in the letter that the school’s “deceptive marketing practices and its infringement on military trademarks” need to be looked into.

The forprofit school, owned by Apollo Education Group, should be barred from military bases and prohibited from recruiting veterans, Durbin said.

The letter added more woes to the nation’s largest forprofit college.

Apollo cut its revenue and profits forecast Monday, two days before new government restrictions on access to student loans went into effect.

The day after the Durbin letter, Apollo shares on Wednesday fell 3.3 percent , to $12.45. The stock is down 63 percent this year as Washington’s crackdown on alleged student loan abuses by all forprofit colleges picked up steam.

Durkin’s call for a probe was sparked by an investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting — which found that Apollo paid for special access to GIs and used résuméwriting workshops as recruiting tools.

New military regulations ban inducements to help forprofit colleges enroll veterans.

“I am astonished at the [Pentagon’s] willingness to accept payment for access, in violation of the spirit of President Obama’s executive order,” Durbin said.

The University of Phoenix has received $1.2 billion in GI Bill benefits since 2009, while offering “degrees of questionable value, belowaverage graduation rates and a student loan default rate almost 40 percent higher than the national average,” Durbin wrote in the letter.

The online college received $345 million to educate about 50,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans last year, the CIR report said.

Only about 7 percent of students graduated.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) is turning up the heat on the University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit college.