For Profit Colleges & Universities

Here is the issue: I am against for-profit colleges. Part of me wants to dedicate a significant amount of attention to shutting them down in my lifetime, while the other part knows they are not all bad. In general, the schools have low graduation rates. They prey on people who can secure financial aid, which means that they have a very high percentage of low-income students taking on lots of debt. I learned recently that for-profits aggressively recruit veterans and their military tuition assistance (read about that here). They do not usually put resources into ensuring quality content delivery, nor do they pay any attention to retention or outcomes unless they are forced to by a new law. But, there are exceptions.

Some for-profit universities do not operate this way so it does not make sense to apply blanket legislation or regulations to the whole industry. Some for-profit institutions provide high quality education in flexible formats to non-traditional college students. The educational models and theories that allow for that are valuable. If postsecondary institutions could use those models with some kind of accountability, it would be fine.  

How do we even begin to implement mechanisms for measuring accountability? Not-for-profit institutions, particularly private schools who have become accustomed to a relatively high degree of political autonomy,  have resisted some of the major legislative pushes toward accountability, such as graduation rate requirements. Some non-profit institutions would be in trouble if graduation rates determined whether an institution can or should exists. This business of trying to untangle nuance in arguments about the validity of for-profit institutions quickly becomes very tricky.

In one of my classes, Contemporary Issues in Higher Education, I am working on a short documentary about the for-profit education sector in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The biggest challenge for me is going to be staying objective in light of my opinions on for-profit higher education.

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 I wanted to include this post I read on an anonymous online forum just to give you some background on the kinds of practices that I disagree with. DISCLAIMER: this person is very upset and their language usage reflects that.

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I work for a for-profit education company. There are a few things I have to get off my chest. . . .  the industry is a complete joke and I'm sickened by what we do .  .  .  First, we accept anybody. A student is merely a conduit in which student loan money flows from the federal government, to us. We could give two sh**s if we think a student will succeed. A student is a revenue unit (and is referred to as such). We'd let everybody in if we could. Unfortunately for us, we can't.

Why? Well, the federal government only allows us to generate 90% of our revenue from their loans. Last I checked, we're at 89.something. We are "private, for-profit" and nearly 100% government subsidized through their loan program. Think about that. Almost 90% of our revenue comes directly from the government and we can keep as much profit out of that as we want with zero obligation. Oh, there’s this thing called gainful employment floating around that’s a feeble attempt to regulate us, but everybody’s pretty sure most of the regulations will be stripped away or watered down to the point of uselessness.
While we’re on the subject of loans, let’s talk about how our students get them. In short, we handle everything. All we need is their name and their consent. We process all the paperwork on their behalf. It's probably our most important function. It's how we stay in business.

Here’s a fun tidbit: We encourage students to take out the maximum loan amount allowed even though they don't need it all to cover their tuition. Why? Because it’s "free money" for the student, that’s why. Let’s just say we charge $25,000 a semester (we actually charge more if you can believe it) and when we talk to the student we'll advise them to take out $30,000 so the student can use the extra $5000 towards whatever they want; perhaps a computer for their online courses or a car to commute to our brick and mortar facility, whatever. We also point out that they don't have to pay this loan back for, like, years so who gives a s***? By that time they’ll have landed a sweet job because of the awesome education their going to get from us.

This might be a really good time to mention our one rule when hiring: If a candidate submits a resume and lists an online for-profit education school as their education (ours included), it is immediately thrown out. Let's just say we know our product.
Our product. My god. I've seen the courses we offer online and they're beyond a joke. I wish I could be more specific, but I'd probably give myself away. I've seen passing grades given for essays that wouldn't have gotten past my 6th grade english teacher. I s*** you not. Don't get me started on the technical degrees.

If all that isn't bad enough, here's the best scam we pull. As a “benefit to our students”, we've established a "Foundation”. We solicit donations for the foundation that go towards student tuition in the form of "scholarships". This is akin to a company like Best Buy taking donations for a self-administered Best Buy Foundation and then giving that money to Best Buy customers and forcing them to use it at Best Buy. We use scholarships as a means to launder our foundation money to our bottom line. The scholarships we hand out usually go to the students who we think we can squeeze a little more out of, probably because they've hit their maximum lifetime limit of how much they can receive in government financial aid. Our scholarships make up the difference so we can get whatever government cash they're still entitled to.