ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants • Hacker News Board

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#51

Post by vonmoltke » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 10:46 PM UTC

cpr wrote: post #45

ng12 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, private does not mean for-profit. The good private universities are still non-profit. There's nothing wrong with for-profit schools in theory. It's a socio-economic problem. There's already so much money flowing through the US university system that the vast majority of for-profit schools are predatory institutions targeting lower-class, under-educated people. Their primary business model is to convince s…

The "good private universities" may be "non-profit" in some strict sense, but in the case of the big Ivies (e.g., Harvard, my alma mater), they could be described as a hedge fund with, oh, yes, by the way, a school attached, or, alternatively, as a huge Federally-funded research institution. The educational part seems to be a facade for the big money/big institution part. (Bitter much? Sure. ;-)

What good is a "hedge fund" you can't take the money out of? The Ivies have massive endowments, but that money can only be spent on the school.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#52

Post by sldivzklhc » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 10:46 PM UTC

cpr wrote: post #45

ng12 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, private does not mean for-profit. The good private universities are still non-profit. There's nothing wrong with for-profit schools in theory. It's a socio-economic problem. There's already so much money flowing through the US university system that the vast majority of for-profit schools are predatory institutions targeting lower-class, under-educated people. Their primary business model is to convince s…

The "good private universities" may be "non-profit" in some strict sense, but in the case of the big Ivies (e.g., Harvard, my alma mater), they could be described as a hedge fund with, oh, yes, by the way, a school attached, or, alternatively, as a huge Federally-funded research institution. The educational part seems to be a facade for the big money/big institution part. (Bitter much? Sure. ;-)

I went to a school like that. They provided grant-only aid to cover tuition and living expenses for students from most of the US income distribution. I think you will have a harder time finding sob stories about my classmates (at least since the no-loan policies were enacted).

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#53

Post by leereeves » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 10:51 PM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #47

The worst thing about ITT Tech (the stupid for profit scam school) is the problem it causes for the employees of ITT, the big defense contractor/technology company, which has nothing to do with the tech school. The "real" ITT has had its name dragged through the mud by these bullshit artists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exelis_Inc . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation http://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-co…

Even though their name is simply ITT now (ITT Inc) I think I would put the old name International Telephone & Telegraph on my resume.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#54

Post by crazy1van » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 10:55 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #23

ulkram wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, there are a lot of good private universities.

In the USA, private does not mean for-profit. The good private universities are still non-profit. There's nothing wrong with for-profit schools in theory. It's a socio-economic problem. There's already so much money flowing through the US university system that the vast majority of for-profit schools are predatory institutions targeting lower-class, under-educated people. Their primary business model is to convince s…

> Their primary business model is to convince students to take out loans to pay for a white-collar education that won't make them any more employable.

I think this applies to far more schools than just private for-profits like ITT. There are many recent graduates from non-profit public schools that have mountains of debt and very little job prospects.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#55

Post by ajkjk » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:04 PM UTC

nickff wrote: post #40

swalsh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, there are many examples of great for-profit institutions. The problem is there's little differentiating them from "predator" schools. One issue is information asymmetry.

There is informational asymmetry in every transaction (as well as in non-profit schools); this is a red herring (unless you can show that it is causing a specific, large, unsolved problem). The current administration has repeatedly demonstrated hostility towards for-profit schools, and has chosen to use discretionary enforcement of rules against them rather than enforcing standards universally, because they know that…

The existence of information asymmetry isn't per se the problem, no, of course not. But it's not a red herring to mention if we can look at the world and see the information asymmetry doing active harm, which I think most commenters here would agree with. The opinion that large numbers of for-profit schools are convincing people to give them money and then providing almost nothing useful in return is so widespread now that I'd assume it to be everyone's default unless they specifically mention otherwise.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#56

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:05 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #14

This is incremental progress, it's just one school. But a crazy step in the right direction. For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation (high-cost low-value educations) allowed to rise up out of the failings of our strained public institutions (not enough capacity to meet demand). What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons. It's li…

I see little difference between large state schools and for profits. Plus there are plenty of "NON-PROFITS" which are soaking up the aid as well; its just a convenient classification; worse they are so to protect their endowments from taxation and such. So why excuse schools like them when non-profit can exploit the tax payer more than for-profits?

Old article http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/take-away-harva...

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#57

Post by naravara » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:06 PM UTC

swalsh wrote: post #14

This is incremental progress, it's just one school. But a crazy step in the right direction. For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation (high-cost low-value educations) allowed to rise up out of the failings of our strained public institutions (not enough capacity to meet demand). What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons. It's li…

The announcements are all coming at once, but decisions like these take a long long LONG time to percolate through the federal bureaucracy. Not quite 8 years, but I would expect they've had contingencies for going down this road kicking around for at least a year or so. I don't think they're just impulsively scrambling to fulfill all their whims, they're just striking now while they have the political capital and the opposition is too distracted and demoralized to make a fuss.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#58

Post by legulere » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:15 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #22

swalsh wrote: post #14

This is incremental progress, it's just one school. But a crazy step in the right direction. For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation (high-cost low-value educations) allowed to rise up out of the failings of our strained public institutions (not enough capacity to meet demand). What really blows my mind is that this seems to come after the justice department discontinues for profit federal prisons. It's li…

In principle there's nothing wrong with for-profit schools which train people on specific job skills or certification programs. There are some valuable skills that non-profit community colleges can't practically teach. But still the federal government should only support financial aid for such schools if they demonstrate a high rate of job placement for students who complete the program.

There are options beside for-profit and non-profits founded out of academic interest. For instance companies can get together and found institutions of higher education to ensure the education of the future workforce for them.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#59

Post by walrus01 » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:15 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #53

walrus01 wrote: post #47

The worst thing about ITT Tech (the stupid for profit scam school) is the problem it causes for the employees of ITT, the big defense contractor/technology company, which has nothing to do with the tech school. The "real" ITT has had its name dragged through the mud by these bullshit artists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exelis_Inc . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Corporation http://www.wsj.com/articles/harris-co…

Even though their name is simply ITT now (ITT Inc) I think I would put the old name International Telephone & Telegraph on my resume.

Know some people who worked for mid-size defence contractors (like EDO) that were acquired by ITT prior to 2012, even though they were receiving paychecks from "ITT" when they moved on, they put the name of the original easily googleable defense contractor on their resumes.

Re: ITT is no longer allowed to enroll students who rely on federal loans and grants

#60

Post by korethr » Thu, Aug 25, 2016, 11:15 PM UTC

grahamburger wrote: post #49

A few years ago I had to make several hires in cities away from the main operations of our business. These were technical positions, but not really highly skilled positions - think geek squad level proficiency. Many of the candidates came out of ITT, and to be honest they were among the best candidates for this level position, or at least they interviewed the best. I got the impression that ITT spends a lot of time r…

How many of them did you end up hiring? That's not sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious.

My experience with ITT tech candidates was the opposite. When interviewing for a datacenter tech position, the candidates were hit and miss on basic sysadmin questions, and seemed to have never seen computer hardware before. To be fair, rackmountable datacenter-style computers look quite a bit different on the outside from the more commonly seen towers and laptops you'll find on a person's desk in an office. But once you open one up, basic components are similar enough that they should be easy to identify. DIMMs are DIMMs, hard drives are hard drives, etc. But when you point to a power supply and tell me that it is the CPU because it has all the wires, or tell me that the video card you're holding is a sound card, you should not have passed the computer hardware class requisite for your degree.