211–220 of 304 posts
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Where do you draw the line? A lot of people make stupid choices do we pick up the tab for any stupid decision anyone makes?
I draw the line at funding exxon but I can't just stop doing it.
Unfortunately, ITT is just the visible tip of the iceberg. There are MANY more for-profit schools of the same ilk as ITT that will fleece the same archetype of education-seeker. This isn't over by a long-shot. These schools are everywhere and they are probably chomping-at-the-bit to get their mits on displaced ITT students and all others that are susceptible to the type of manipulative and deceptive marketing practic…
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Judging by history, this would be seen as a license to artificially inflate costs, such that the university system would become a machine for extracting money from the public treasury and placing it into private hands. You must have some feedback control, wherein the amount of public funding is dependent upon some objective criterion that measures the extent to which the public college provides a useful service to th…
Judging from history, cheap colleges in the post-war decades worked just fine for the boomers.
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I don't disagree that for-profit colleges get a bad rap, but I think it's deserved in the case of ITT Tech and Corinthian. I think about the government handing out student loans to students who statistically won't be able to repay, and I'm OK with the DOE putting a stop to it. Taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook for these failed loans, and if they know which institutions are largely at fault then good on them fo…
"handing out student loans to students who statistically won't be able to repay, and I'm OK with the DOE putting a stop to it" Right, but ot depends on the facts. Were they just asked to put up reasonable collateral, foreseeable from what they delivered compared with their responsibilities by taking federal money? Or were they blindsided with an arbitrary number from the DOE that was intended to force them to shut do…
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None would argue with second part. I would say not doing a google search before spending 10k+ is closer to stupid action .
I don't think you understand how these schools sell their "education" to people who are ignorant of higher education. They literally targeted people who don't know any better and promise that they will make $75k out the gate.
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My local one has cut back on everything in the last few years. No more counselors - just use the online tools! And they're mostly about getting federal financial aid. Placement consists mostly of 'apprentice' positions which means a vanload of students running the back end of a restaurant somewhere all summer and sharing an apartment meant for 2. Strangely they don't advertise at all - at least in the media I see. Wh…
>No more counselors - just use the online tools! N=1 here, but I got no apparent utility from the existence of counselors in high school or college. In retrospect they handled some registering paperwork for me, but they also planned my coursework for me as if I were the median student. In high school I had to press the counselor to let me take more AP courses than she thought was wise. In college, it was more of a ru…
I had the same experience in college though. Heck, I'm an MSE student now and I don't even have an advisor because the one they assigned me left and I haven't been bothered to get a new one.
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While there may well be more bad (by whatever metric) for-profit colleges there are also bad non-profit colleges. And non-profit itself is a bit of misnomer. It is true that registered non-profits can't pay dividends to their shareholders, but they can and sometimes do pay exorbitant salaries to those that have control over them. As the gainful employment rule[1] currently stands it exempts degree programs from publi…
Be careful what you wish for. This would basically kill liberal arts programs and the idea of a well-rounded post-secondary education. The incentive would be to transform universities into job-training programs. I know there is an ongoing debate about the worth of a liberal arts education in the modern economy, but there's something to be said about the traditional notion of education for education's sake, rather tha…
If you take away the student loan subsidies then the cost of those liberal art programs will inevitably come down, or at least they will be restricted to just the people that can afford a house worth of tuition to study philosophy.
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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…
The end result you describe isn't much different than a number of 4 year undergraduate degrees, PhDs or masters programs (all at "good" colleges). The best advice I ever received was to not pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy. It's wrong to think that departments at not-for-profit schools don't have a marketing incentive that is (at best) indifferent to the best interests of the student.
The difference is that the percentage of people with that negative end result is MUCH higher. Looking at stats like the default rate for students at for-profits vs non-profits is one indicator.
>It's wrong to think that departments at not-for-profit schools don't have a marketing incentive that is (at best) indifferent to the best interests of the student.
There is definitely some truth in this. HOWEVER, a big difference is that in many cases the interests of the department and the student are more aligned at non-profits than for-profits. The most obvious example is completion/graduation rates. At least at the undergraduate and masters level, there is a strong incentive to select students that are LIKELY to graduate from the program. Bringing in woefully underprepared students who have little chance of finishing the degree seems to be strongly discouraged at the undergraduate and masters level. I cannot speak for the PhD level, since I have little experience in that area.
Contrast that with stories about MULTIPLE for-profit colleges going so far as to target the homeless for recruitment into their universities. In some cases they went so far as recruiting people who DID NOT OWN A COMPUTER to sign up for online degree programs. Since virtually all Americans (regardless of credit score) qualify for up to $20K in loans per year (with a cap of about $180K total), a students ability (or lack there of) to complete the program is irrelevant as long as the money keeps flowing in.
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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…
Do you have any sources for your statistical statement in the beginning of your comment?
Having also worked in a state's higher education commission, I can that for-profit colleges were consistently two to three times more expensive than publicly-funded 4-year universities, even when accounting for room and board (which for-profit colleges don't offer, as a rule). They also lost the ability to be disbursed student loan funds due to not meeting minimum employment rates among graduates.