What are these colleges doing with their money?

The Washington Post reports.

The list your college does not want to be on

Hundreds of colleges across the country that are doing a poor job of managing their finances are on a federal watch list that could ultimately make it difficult to access financial aid dollars, a critical lifeline for universities.

On Tuesday, the Education Department released the names of 556 colleges that it has placed under tougher oversight known as “heightened cash monitoring.” There are myriad reasons schools can end up on the list, including turning in late financial statements, having accreditation issues or operating with a lot of debt.

Education Undersecretary Ted Mitchell said the problems ranged from “serious to less troublesome,” and he called the added scrutiny more of a “caution light” than a “red flag to students and taxpayers.”

Still, there is a lot more interest in the watch list these days because of the collapse of for-profit giant Corinthian Colleges. The company, which ran the Everest, Heald College and WyoTech schools, landed on the list last summer for missing financial reporting deadlines. The government delayed the schools’ reimbursement of federal student loans for nearly a month, leaving the company strapped for cash and on the brink of closing.