University of Phoenix is paying $191 million in fines:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2019/12/ftc-o...

And the cost to tax payers?

Don’t know, but that’s just one school. Others were fined. Whether or not they actually pay those fines rather than declare bankruptcy... I don’t know. I would guess they just declare bankruptcy and laugh all the way to the bank.

> So the schools where fraudulous, the solution is to reward the system by helping their victims and have no sanction on the school?

Nope, sanctions on the schools also exist (some from Department of Education, some from other agencies, some through lawsuits by students); in fact, most of the students involved, as noted by the article, were students of either ITT Technical Institute or Corinthian College, both of whom have gone out of business due almost entirely due to consequences of their fraud.

Dealing with fraud that ends up costing the federal government money will probably fall under another agency’s jurisdiction and there probably won’t be a blanket announcement that everyone who did some fraud is being investigated.