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ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

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231–240 of 304 posts

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're actually quite a few apprenticeship programs here in the states. Learning a skilled trade just isn't sexy for a lot of kids and for some reason are looked down upon. Even though you can get a welding apprenticeship and be earning 70-80K right out of the gate. High schools here are starting to encourage kids to take a more non-traditional route to a career and letting kids know there are other avenues other th…

I'm not disagreeing with your encouragement towards the skilled trades, but please do be realistic with your information. Median salary is $40K. http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Welder/Hourly_Rate

And with most places paying overtime, it's easy to push that up to the 70-80K range I was talking about. I should've been clearer in stating that.

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The additional cost of meeting the accreditation requirements, and the accreditation fees and dues, would exceed the portion that could be monetized out of the additional value imbued to the product by virtue of earning the accreditation.

That's a bold claim to make the day they shut down. :)

Naturally, I am assuming that a for-profit business made a rational cost-benefit analysis.

But it also could have been that they would rather have had countable cash in hand than nebulous goodwill some time in the future. Business managers don't always make rational decisions based on what is best for the business.

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#235
post #130
post #54

I went to a similar for-profit school in Minnesota who also similarly shut down last year. I still feel like they get a bad rap. Was it overpriced? Probably. Did I learn a ton and have small class sizes. Absolutely. The instructors had all previously worked in the industry, and knew their topics very well. On top of all that, after graduation their persistent pestering of "how many places did you apply to this week?"…

Just because you had a great experience does not negate the fact that for-profit college students, statistically, fare much worse. A common pattern I have seen: Person does terrible in high school, doesn't get into a good college because they don't have the drive or commitment to get good grades. They go to community college, and surprise, they again get terrible grades and stop going. After a while they want to go b…

oh let us be honest here, graduation rates pretty much suck across the board at colleges and are nothing to be proud of. For profits just got to take the rap because they were easy to demagogue and a few cherry picked examples were truly bad.

but on a whole, even state and private (non profit - now there is the real crime - the non profit colleges) have nothing to brag about https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_326.10.a...

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#236
post #224

It looks like the main problem in this whole scheme is the government-funded student loan program. ITT was wrangling to get access that that loan money as a key to its operations. Failing to comply with the Dept of Ed's requirements caused them to go out of business, since they would no longer have a place at the public trough. How many state schools and private colleges could survive without government largess? We'v…

> We've seen a massive increase in tuition costs, far beyond inflation in recent years. Such is the result of artificially boosting demand for college on the backs of the taxpayer. There's nothing recent about it. Tuition has been rising far beyond on inflation going back to at least the 1920s. Take Stanford. For each decade here is the factor tuition actually rose from that of 10 years earlier divided by the factor…

That is interesting indeed. Thanks for finding that data.

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#237

It looks like the main problem in this whole scheme is the government-funded student loan program. ITT was wrangling to get access that that loan money as a key to its operations. Failing to comply with the Dept of Ed's requirements caused them to go out of business, since they would no longer have a place at the public trough. How many state schools and private colleges could survive without government largess? We'v…

I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with loan forgiveness, but to claim that going to college is a bad decision is really a poor choice of words. Everyone you talk to everywhere says that "a college education is the path to a good job" and "college educated workers make - on average - n% more than their non-college-educated counterparts". When these people (kids really at 18) graduate from high school, they are making th…

> claim that going to college is a bad decision

Taking on the loans is the bad decision, in the case that the student is stuck with no career prospects and a mountain of debt.

> they are making the best decision they can possibly make

That is not true. Going to college is not the best decision for everyone. Many graduates are over-qualified for the jobs they end up taking. Many jobs that should not require a degree now can afford to filter applicants based on completing college, since so many more people are going.

Employers are basically using your years at school as a signal that you are a hard worker. Is that signal worth the time and cost?

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#238
post #54

I went to a similar for-profit school in Minnesota who also similarly shut down last year. I still feel like they get a bad rap. Was it overpriced? Probably. Did I learn a ton and have small class sizes. Absolutely. The instructors had all previously worked in the industry, and knew their topics very well. On top of all that, after graduation their persistent pestering of "how many places did you apply to this week?"…

I believe that all schools should have partial liability for the defaults of their students. You make a good point that this heavy-handed regulation of schools by shutting them down can hurt a few people who may benefit from alternative schools.

If all schools were partially liable for loan defaults (say 50%), they would pay far more attention into creating programs that have good job prospects and less on programs that just sound good. They'd also have an incentive to charge a reasonable tuition instead of maximizing the cost based on what can be borrowed. And they would spend a great deal more effort on job placement after graduation. The government would not have to pick and choose what schools to close down.

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Santa Rosa Junior College[1]. I just looked up AMATYC rankings, and apparently they haven't placed since 2003-2004. I'm not sure if that's because of their math department degrading, or other colleges stepping up their game, or some failure at the state K12 level in supplying fundamentals (since the contest is based on student performance). It's possible my information is somewhat out of date (I went through there ar…

Nice, I live in SR now and attended SRJC in '02-03 or so, but eventually made my way to their Petaluma campus for their CCNA program.

Ah, I still live there myself. A nice place to live if you can leverage something close to a SF payscale even though you're an hour north, as the housing cost is still relatively high compared to almost everywhere else in the country.

Re: ITT Technical Institutes Shuts Down

#240
post #179

I am personaly happy to see the hammer come down on these for-profit universities. I too feel for the students as I was one of the Corinthian Colleges students a few years ago at Everest University through one of the Florida campuses. My degree program was the A.S. in Computer Information Sciences -- such a waste. Look up the job placement rates for that program in 2010, just insane. Thankfully I too have been able t…

The higher-ed debt bubble already started, it's just about to pop me thinks: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAPOL&fstype=ii&ei=... https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE%3ADV&fstype=ii&ei=HvnO... https://www.google.com/finance?q=OTCMKTS%3ACOCOQ&fstype=ii&e...

long time coming --- tuition rates have been exceeding inflation for quite some time
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