The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
newyorker.com
The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
1–10 of 114 posts
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#2Here in the UK, there's an ongoing headlong rush driven by the incumbent robber baron^W^Wconservative government to turn a majority of schools into "academies", which is a back-door to complete privatisation of the "educational sector" (it's only a "sector" to those who see it as a profit-bearing industry, rather than an investment in "our" collective future).
Any negative news about the effects of privatisation elsewhere, such as this, is sidestepped deftly, as, you see, academies aren't privatisation, they're, uh, enabling, um, better education, for the children, saving the taxpayer.... look over there, shiny thing!
Academies have already come under fire for all varieties of corruption and improper practice, but individuals ("a few bad eggs") are being blamed rather than the system which promotes the viewing of and engagement with children as nascent consumers.
shakes head
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#3Here in the UK, there's an ongoing headlong rush driven by the incumbent robber baron^W^Wconservative government to turn a majority of schools into "academies", which is a back-door to complete privatisation of the "educational sector" (it's only a "sector" to those who see it as a profit-bearing industry, rather than an investment in "our" collective future). Any negative news about the effects of privatisation else…
I broadly share your opinion about the "academy" movement in the UK, but it's not terribly relevant to this article, which is about what in the UK are called universities rather than schools.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#4The crackdown is long overdue, but there’s an important consequence: fewer nontraditional students will be able to go to college.
Sure, but why would we want to encourage anyone to attend "colleges" like Corinthians and University of Phoenix, if the effects are on average as harmful as described in the article? Not sure if this is just the author trying to shoehorn in some "debate" at the end of the article but it feels like it, given the details of the rest of the piece.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#5Jon Oliver did a great bit on privatization of education:
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#6The crackdown is long overdue, but there’s an important consequence: fewer nontraditional students will be able to go to college. Sure, but why would we want to encourage anyone to attend "colleges" like Corinthians and University of Phoenix, if the effects are on average as harmful as described in the article? Not sure if this is just the author trying to shoehorn in some "debate" at the end of the article but it fe…
The whole article has a weird tone when it comes to its descriptions about for-profit colleges. It starts with "Not too long ago, for-profit colleges looked like the future of education." When was that? People that knew anything about for-profit colleges have known they were mostly ripoffs for years. What people might have thought is that online colleges were the future. Those aren't dependent on the for-profit model at all. Lots of real colleges offer online courses - and quite often for less money than for-profit ones. Those will still be around for nontraditional students even if all for-profit colleges were eliminated.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#7This is a good thing for the country; the education provided by these schools is often on par with sources like Kahn Academy and Coursera -- at a much higher price. It seemed like many for-profit colleges are simply a way for "schools" to collect federally guaranteed loans that the students then have to pay back. The student assumes all of the risk.
The other side of this industry are charter schools. These are for-profit K-12 schools, often paid for by state / local governments. The problems with them are:
1) Graft is common, with charter school administrators sometimes taking home ludicrous salaries ($500k+ for schools with ~1,000 students)
2) Funding often comes directly from the local school district, most of which are already severely cash-strapped. The problem here is that the cost of a single student attending a school district is largely buried in fixed costs: when the state takes $6000/yr from a district and gives it to a charter school, the district's costs do not decrease by $6000. This makes school districts worse, which accelerates flight to charter / private schools.
3) Educational standards are different -- in most states, faith-based charter schools are totally ok. As long as they teach some bare-minimum requirements, they can teach as much religion as they want. Also, most states offer some sort of funding incentive based on test scores -- which just encourages schools to play the numbers game by finding reasons to suspend/expel struggling students, encourage cheating on tests, etc.
To be fair, not all charter schools are for-profit, and there are good charter schools and bad ones. But the entire system stinks; it cuts funding to struggling districts, leaving them in a perpetual budget crisis. It often does little to improve the education of students, while placing more of the burden on parents to go shopping for a school.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#8The crackdown is long overdue, but there’s an important consequence: fewer nontraditional students will be able to go to college. Sure, but why would we want to encourage anyone to attend "colleges" like Corinthians and University of Phoenix, if the effects are on average as harmful as described in the article? Not sure if this is just the author trying to shoehorn in some "debate" at the end of the article but it fe…
The whole article has a weird tone when it comes to its descriptions about for-profit colleges. It starts with "Not too long ago, for-profit colleges looked like the future of education." When was that? People that knew anything about for-profit colleges have known they were mostly ripoffs for years. What people might have thought is that online colleges were the future. Those aren't dependent on the for-profit model…
> People that knew anything about for-profit colleges have known they were mostly ripoffs for years.
The problem is many people, like myself and parents, didn't know this. I'm doing fine though but I would not recommend it to anyone.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#9This is a good thing for the country; the education provided by these schools is often on par with sources like Kahn Academy and Coursera -- at a much higher price. It seemed like many for-profit colleges are simply a way for "schools" to collect federally guaranteed loans that the students then have to pay back. The student assumes all of the risk. The other side of this industry are charter schools. These are for-p…
3 is crucially important -- and the religion thing is really unimportant compared to the larger problem.
Charter schools, in many states, occupy the absurd position of being able to claim that they out-perform local schools while selecting or quasi-selecting their student population and still not actually participating -- at all -- in the standardized testing that justified their existence in the first place.
Re: The Rise and Fall of For-Profit Schools
#10A lot of military and older prefer the online experience. It takes time to commute to classes. Also the straight out of high school students are immature and aimless. In the beginning the for-profit college offered a better online experience. But regular colleges are catching up.