Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 142 posts

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

#111

Post by wpietri »

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.

I get what you're saying, but I think there is in principle something wrong.

The theory of markets is that even if a company is staffed by the greediest sons of bitches, market mechanisms will force them to converge on delivering high customer value. But markets work best when you have savvy customers that purchase frequently, can quickly evaluate results, and can easily try other suppliers.

Unfortunately, none of that is true for education. Most customers purchase just one degree. They are by definition ignorant about the topic. Switching schools is hard. It takes years to find out if the education is really any good in the job market. The barrier to entry for new schools is very large.

So even in principle I think there's good reason to be suspicious of for-profit education.

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

#112

Post by nogbit »

copperx wrote: post #97
merpnderp wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that same vein why do public schools get to saddle kids with an average of $30k in debt and leave them with the prospect of $8/hour jobs as many degrees do? Where's the outrage over public schools who do the exact same thing?

A school's main objective is not to make you employable.

No, but many do have full time employees in their "career services" center working to place you with an employer.

http://foster.uw.edu/careers/career-services/

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

#113

Post by ajkjk »

makomk wrote: post #92
nickff wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many state colleges have low 6 year graduation rates too (as they vary widely), should they be shut down too? Is there any reason 25% or 30% are unacceptable, but 50% is fine?[1] [1] http://collegecompletion.chronicle.com/

A 50% graduation rate is literally double a 25% graduation rate. You're arguing that the only reason for the US government to care about the fact that students at for-profit institutions are half as likely to graduate is because they've got a grudge against them, as though this is some minor difference that no-one should care about.

And, sure, a 50% graduation rate at a state college is a big problem that should be investigated as well. But it's definitely not true that "all of the state colleges" have this problem, whereas it (as least seems to be) ubiquitous among for-profit schools.

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

#114

Post by NotSammyHagar »

We should also stop allowing all colleges (including public ones) to graze on the huge loans that their students get. If there were not endless federal loans, public schools wouldn't be able to endlessly raise their tuition.

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

#115

Post by chillwaves »

SilasX wrote: post #81
kosievdmerwe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with for-profit prisons is the misalignment between what's good for profit and what's good for prisoners. Where the prisoners can't "vote with their wallets" to counter-balance this misalignment. I don't see a similar issue with for-profit schools. In order to attract students they need to to provide good education and foster a good reputation.

I can't rigorously prove it, but I'm pretty sure the people complaining about for-profit prisons wouldn't change their minds even if there were a system of "staple $N/month to every prisoner and they can go to whatever private prison will have them". After all, we have basically that system for for-profit schools and ...

All for profit schools are pretty terrible. I am assuming this is true of for profit prisons as well. Having to choose among different terrible choices doesn't seem like a solution.

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

#116

Post by commandar »

SilasX wrote: post #82
swalsh wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the profit comes before the education. These institutions prey on low-income people who for whatever reason couldn't get into public institutions. When the students graduate they have huge debts, typically larger than those that went to public institutions, but worse their degrees are often worthless. The accreditation for these institutions often come from companies owned by the same corporation. T…

>The issue is that the profit comes before the education. ... That sounds like a fully-general argument against provision of any good by a for-profit business: "The issue with private farms is that the profit comes before the food." "The issue with private semiconductors is the profit comes before the computational efficiency." True, profits do bring the potential for fraud, abuse, etc., but obviously there are at le…

>What's special about education per se?

In the US? The fact that it gets paid for with loans that aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

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

#117

Post by SilasX »

chillwaves wrote: post #115
SilasX wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't rigorously prove it, but I'm pretty sure the people complaining about for-profit prisons wouldn't change their minds even if there were a system of "staple $N/month to every prisoner and they can go to whatever private prison will have them". After all, we have basically that system for for-profit schools and ...

All for profit schools are pretty terrible. I am assuming this is true of for profit prisons as well. Having to choose among different terrible choices doesn't seem like a solution.

Typically, it's the potential to choose that leads to improvement, across a wide range of goods. To claim that it's all different for schools, you'd need to demonstrate a general model of the dynamics.

And FWIW, the coding bootcamp I went to (for profit) did more for my career than my non-profit university.

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

#118

Post by SilasX »

commandar wrote: post #116
SilasX wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The issue is that the profit comes before the education. ... That sounds like a fully-general argument against provision of any good by a for-profit business: "The issue with private farms is that the profit comes before the food." "The issue with private semiconductors is the profit comes before the computational efficiency." True, profits do bring the potential for fraud, abuse, etc., but obviously there are at le…

>What's special about education per se? In the US? The fact that it gets paid for with loans that aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy.

I meant, what's special in terms of profits skewing incentives.

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

#119

Post by eecc »

wpietri wrote: post #111
nradov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I get what you're saying, but I think there is in principle something wrong. The theory of markets is that even if a company is staffed by the greediest sons of bitches, market mechanisms will force them to converge on delivering high customer value. But markets work best when you have savvy customers that purchase frequently, can quickly evaluate results, and can easily try other suppliers. Unfortunately, none of th…

And besides what you've already correctly noted, the theory of markets is just that, a theory. A very simplistic, idealized model that very quickly diverges from reality.

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

#120

Post by eecc »

WalterBright wrote: post #104
TulliusCicero wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There is informational asymmetry in every transaction Yes, but informational asymmetry is a much bigger problem for larger, less frequent decisions, like buying a house, or going to college. With small, frequent decisions, like buying groceries, you can quickly learn from your mistakes and the harm done from potentially choosing an inferior/overly expensive grocer a few times is small. With college, if you don't fig…

> if you don't figure out that the educational provider was poor until after you've graduated Is using google that difficult? After all, I went to college before the internet, and didn't have any trouble finding reviews of the various options, and used that to form a list to apply to. With google it's a few minutes' job. There's never been less information asymmetry.

So you base your life-changing decisions on Google?! That's smart, go on, you'll go far...
Post reply on HN