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Re: [Phys-l] For profit universities (Was: Cramster et al.)



I consider most for-profits in the regular higher-ed market to be the equivalent of Enzyte (remember Smiling Bob?): all show, but nothing more, with the real possibility of being harmful. They certainly aren't any cheaper than a small, private non-profit.

-----Original Message-----
From: phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu [mailto:phys-l-bounces@carnot.physics.buffalo.edu] On Behalf Of John Clement
Sent: Saturday, May 15, 2010 10:47 AM
To: 'Forum for Physics Educators'
Subject: Re: [Phys-l] For profit universities (Was: Cramster et al.)

The frontline video is not that long, and is worth watching. Some salient
facts were brought out. The cost of for profit education far exceeds the
cost of private non profits, which in turn exceed the public education. The
lowest cost is achieved by the community college system. The average debt
load of a for profit graduate is twice that of a private non profit. 10% of
the students in the US attend for profits, but they account for 50% of the
Federal loan defaults.

Apparently a number of the "for profits" are heavily engaged in advertising
and twisting student arms to get them into their programs. As a result in a
number of cases they have hidden many of the problems, or outright made
promises which are false. For example they have brought in candidates for a
nursing program and then not given them the necessary clinical experience so
they could be hired. They ended up with high debt and no jobs. Similarly a
school promised psychology students that they would be able to practice, but
the school lacked the necessary certification. My wife even knew of some
cases of people who were promised jobs if they took the courses, but after
spending a large amount of borrowed money they found out that they then had
to spend 1 year doing unpaid volunteer work in a hospital to be hired. Now
it is true that some traditional schools have done similar things. I know
of a school that had a long standing existing library science program, but
was not ALA certified. They promised students they would get certification,
but they were dodos and never got it. Their LS program is now defunct. But
they did not go around heavily advertising it and twisting arms.

Both for profits and traditional schools have been guilty of bringing in
students who are not ready, and not provided enough support. In many cases
the support did not work very well. Look at the ADAPT papers to see the
difference. But there was brought out some evidence that the for profits
are not adequately testing students or they are providing inadequate
education. The pressure to pass students on is much greater when the school
depends solely on the tuition payments.

The free enterprise system works very well when people can rationally decide
which competitor is providing a better product. It does not work as well
when there is inadequate information. So auto repair shops are in a way
less competitive because you really do not have enough information to be
able to rate all of them. You depend on word of mouth, and sometimes on
locally published reports. But in medicine and education you have even less
information. And the information you have is often irrelevant to being able
to make an informed decision. Sure if you want to be a Supreme Court
Justice you should go to Harvard or Yale, but even then your chances are
miniscule.

The for profits have managed to exploit this factor, and have found a
clientele which is hungry for better jobs. But they are exploiting these
people who often are not able to research and figure out the best
alternatives. As a result we no have an educational debt crisis. Are some
of these schools now too big to fail??? OK, there are probably some good
for profit programs, but the bad ones are likely to cause them to fail.
Once the word gets out about how they have duped many students, their growth
will stop. The federal government may well be forced into limiting
subsidized loans which will put another damper on them. And accrediting
agencies are not looking very closely at the issue of buying accreditation
by purchasing and accredited college. The for profits rely on steady
growth, and if that stops, they may become insolvent.

But what about the students who have crushing debt. $30k may not seem like
much to someone in a high paying job, but when you have that type of debt in
a minimum wage job, and no prospects of advancement, it is crushin. One for
profit administrator suggested the feds could easily forgive the debt. But
the current laws forbid that. The educational load debt can not be removed
even by bankruptcy, and assets and wages are all subject to being garnished
to pay the debt. The law suits against the for profits are mounting, but it
remains to be seen how successful they will be.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


Take a look at last week's PBS Frontline "College, Inc" to see the
alternative to public education. Just google Frontline. You will get
a new understanding of the term: "Business Model" as it applies to
academia.

If you extrapolate to what has been going on at your own university,
you'll understand that the tail is wagging the dog, and higher
education is about to be the bubble that bursts worse than sub-prime
loans did. It is the new "darling" of Wall Street.


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