General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFor-Profit Colleges Are America's Dream Crushers
http://www.alternet.org/activism/profit-colleges-are-americas-dream-crushersImagine corporations that intentionally target low-income single mothers as ideal customers. Imagine that these same companies claim to sell tickets to the American dream -- gainful employment, the chance for a middle class life. Imagine that the fine print on these tickets, once purchased, reveals them to be little more than debt contracts, profitable to the corporations investors, but disastrous for its customers. And imagine that these corporations receive tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies to do this dirty work. Now, know that these corporations actually exist and are universities.
Over the last three decades, the price of a year of college has increased by more than 1,200%. In the past, American higher education has always been associated with upward mobility, but with student loan debt quadrupling between 2003 and 2013, its time to ask whether education alone can really move people up the class ladder. This is a question of obvious relevance for low-income students and students of color.
As Cornell professor Noliwe Rooks and journalist Kai Wright have reported, black college enrollment has increased at nearly twice the rate of white enrollment in recent years, but a disproportionate number of those African-American students end up at for-profit schools. In 2011, two of those institutions, the University of Phoenix (with physical campuses in 39 states and massive online programs) and the online-only Ashford University, produced more black graduates than any other institutes of higher education in the country. Unfortunately, a recent survey by economist Rajeev Darolia shows that for-profit graduates fare little better on the job market than job seekers with high school degrees; their diplomas, that is, are a net loss, offering essentially the same grim job prospects as if they had never gone to college, plus a lifetime debt sentence.
Many students who enroll in such colleges dont realize that there is a difference between for-profit, public, and private non-profit institutions of higher learning. All three are concerned with generating revenue, but only the for-profit model exists primarily to enrich its owners. The largest of these institutions are often publicly traded, nationally franchised corporations legally beholden to maximize profit for their shareholders before maximizing education for their students. While commercial vocational programs have existed since the nineteenth century, for-profit colleges in their current form are a relatively new phenomenon that began to boom with a series of initial public offerings in the 1990s, followed quickly by deregulation of the sector as the millennium approached. Bush administration legislation then weakened government oversight of such schools, while expanding their access to federal financial aid, making the industry irresistible to Wall Street investors.
Heidi
(58,237 posts)mornin', sunshine!
Heidi
(58,237 posts)Happy Monday!
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)Believes everyone should get a college degree. Not every is college materials, but since the new norm is that everyone must go to college. We have kids who can't get accepted in a traditional school so these schools saw a place for them.
exboyfil
(17,857 posts)They have very loose standards at community colleges for example, and take a look at the graduation rates of some public universities.
http://money.msn.com/college-savings/11-worst-public-university-grad-rates
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/50-state-universities-with-best-worst-grad-rates/
Graduation rates for community colleges are virtually meaningless unless you have a way to track what happens at the university level. For example my daughter had to split her community college work between three colleges. She could not obtain residency in any one college, but she completed enough hours and coursework for an A.S. She started as a Junior in Engineering at our land grant university.
Now some pass can be given for what are essentially regional feeders to main campuses (I am not sure if that is tracked) but some of these schools grant doctoral degrees - in no way should those be characterized as feeder schools.
aikoaiko
(34,127 posts)They should be closed down.
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)So much for diploma mills. They don't even give out diplomas.
GAC
aikoaiko
(34,127 posts)this is their attempt to winnow out people who cant handle online course work before they are counted in their retention, progression, and graduation rates.
we cant really shut them down directly, but the DOE could cutoff federal financial aid.
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)Somebody washes out in a free class, never actually signs up, and then they still only graduate 7%. I'll say it again. Yikes.
aikoaiko
(34,127 posts)At least with the free class, the students aren't taking on a couple of thousand in debt if they bail.
Tuition is about $600 per credit hour for a typical undergrad class. Plus fees its about $2000.
I noticed their enrollment dropped from nearly 600,000 to about 250,000 since 2010. I think they know the DOE will cut them off if they don't improve their grad rate.
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)That makes sense. It's still pretty attocious. And the costs are "Shazaam!". I know i'm getting older, but in undergrad i paid $1200 per semester and took 18 hours per term. Then, taking two classes from June to August, i paid 75% of a credit hour. I was paying around $2600 plus books and fees for 44 hours per calendar year. That's $59.10 per credit hour.
Even my grad classes in chemistry (late 70's) were only $90 an hour. My MBA (mid to late 90's) was the highest i ever paid and that was around $950 per term or roughly $240 per credit hour.
These costs are ridiculous.
On Edit: And, schools like Phoenix have minimal brick and mortar too. How could it cost that much?
brush
(53,474 posts)for their deceived students. They should be against the law.
What have we become as a country that allows these for-profit debt mills to prey on vulnerable, unsuspecting and, unfortunately, uninformed students who are just looking to better their life?
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)You are dead on.
joshdawg
(2,637 posts)Anyone? You in the back, are you surprised? No? Anyone?
For profit institutions of so-called learning need to go the way of the dodo bird.
rurallib
(62,346 posts)to elementary and high schools around the country!
charter schools and all that.
PatrickforO
(14,516 posts)Privatize, deregulate and SCREW.
Predatory capitalism at its best.
davidpdx
(22,000 posts)Went to a public college for undergrad and at the time it was $1,100 a term which was pretty cheap.
tammywammy
(26,582 posts)I went to a private university for my undergrad, but they're non-profit. I'm doing my masters at a state school.
BrainDrain
(244 posts)exposing the obvious.
Money..money..money.
The American dream through higher education is at best a myth..and at it's worst a crushing debt filled lie.
So why do we continue to hear it day after day after day? Money.
Why are people STUPID enough to believe it? The sold-as-is hope of more money. ( A college grad will earn 1 MILLION more.....)
Burn your degrees as heat folks 'cause that's all they are good for. The game is rigged, and it ain't in your favor. Learn THAT, it's for free.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)I was in admissions. What the students took out in loans was oppressive 17 years ago! The jobs they obtained at the end of their "education" didn't may much, if any, more than they made before they took on all that debt.
JCMach1
(27,544 posts)pay was around $2.85 an hr...
I told them no thanks.
ProfessorGAC
(64,425 posts)When i started it was a pretty healthy second income for one class a week.
I had to change schools 3 times just to stay even with inflation, and that became impossible at some point.
So, i quite doing it. Getting two old to burn the candle at anthing other the top.
Rex
(65,616 posts)We shot ourselves in the foot, then we made college all about getting that 'great job'. Now all we have is vulture trade school pretending to give a shit about education. Ain't capitalism grand?
Everything can be turned into a clusterfuck! Yay money!
Initech
(99,915 posts)For profit anything sucks. For profit healthcare sucks. For profit churches suck. For profit prisons suck. For profit education sucks. And the people that own these spawns of Satan suck.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)But I have no problem with for-profit luxuries. If someone wants to buy and can afford a Ferrari, a Zegna suit, a Piaget watch or a custom-built Alembic bass guitar, fine. One can live nicely without any of them but the world is a neater place with things like that around.
Mosby
(16,168 posts)It was great.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)And when we have they were pretty much useless when they stepped through the door.
SomethingFishy
(4,876 posts)go straight into the trash.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Most of these places at least try to come up with something legit sounding, "Full Sail" sounds like a place that teaches watercraft safety.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)who get suckered into "universities" like Regent and Liberty, but that is damning with the faintest of praise.
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)I suspect even the most fundamentalist university probably has some expectation of literacy.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)Invite the rats into the silo and wonder then where all the grain went. "Profit maximization" is killing this country.
Louisiana1976
(3,962 posts)universities would be free so students wouldn't either be paying an arm and a leg upfront or taking on crippling debt.