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

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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For-Profit institutions are a plague on our nation I dont understand. ANY for profit? Like Apple or Ford? Or just educational institutions? If just educational institutions, what is special about that sector that makes them a plague?

The decision is specifically targeting for-profit degree mills. The problem is that these institutions provide expensive educations, paid for by people taking out student loans (which the institutions actively encourage). However, these same institutions don't provide any sort of education that would give their students even a remote chance of paying off the student loans on any reasonable timeframe. This creates a s…

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that most of the people going to ITT-esque schools are getting Pell Grants (free money, not loans) first and foremost to cover their costs.

I didn't even know this was a thing until after I graduated (I never got a Pell Grant because my parents made too much money).

Some schools have over 90% of their students funding their entire costs through Pell Grants (look at University of Puerto Rico or Interamerican University of Puerto Rico for some extreme examples).

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

#92
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Graduation rates at non profit schools are appalling. University of Pheonix routinely graduates less than 20% of its students within six years. Even if all of the benefit is signaling, which I disagree with, the students at many for profit institutions aren't even getting that benefit.

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.

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

#93
post #40
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…

> I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non-profits.

This seems fair to me. You can argue that wasted money at NFP schools ends up in someone's pocket, but bald faced "every buck not spent educating you" going into the pocket of capital seems worse.

If the outcomes at FP higeher education aren't better, why not avoid funneling federal money (in the form of no interest loans, etc) directly in private profits?

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

#94
post #22
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.

[deleted]

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

#95
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely - if you can be both regionally and nationally accredited go for it. But most of these schools are in the "credits earned may not transfer" class, at which point the only thing you have going for you is vocational (which has merit). But if you're a hybrid or a degree awarding institution that no other schools recognize, then that's a problem and there's near zero value to what you're offering (which isn't…

I agree with what you and others are saying in general but "credits earned may not transfer" might as well apply anywhere. Between state/city university system, community college, and top-tier private college I had a hell of a time getting any credits to go anywhere. (Including for very run-of-the-mill, non-"core", non-specialized subjects.)

I had a hard time convincing a Community College here that they should accept my VCE from Australia as being equivalent to a high school diploma (it is) and not making me sit an equivalency exam... only made more ironic by the Bachelor's degree that I also had.

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

#96
post #30
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.

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.

Honest question: what are some examples of great for-profit institutions?

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

#97
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.

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.

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

#98
post #8

Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education. Yes, some of these are a shame, but the student might still learn something. And there's also the issue of time and scheduling. Many older people don't have the time to go to a traditional college and taking a 1 year program at night for a "2 year associates degree" fits them better. Even worse still, most of these…

> Personally I don't think the government has the right to bar anyone from getting any kind of education. Yes, some of these are a shame, but the student might still learn something.

That's some of the most threadbare reasoning I've ever seen on HN.

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

#99
post #43

I'm torn on this. Understand, I have little love for ITT, and I got my 4 year degree from there. In hindsight, I wish I'd done community college and the local university instead. I honestly believe I'd have had a better curriculum, better books and a better ratio of instructors who cared to ones who didn't. I believe I'd have had to take on less student loan debt, as well. That said, suppose ITT Tech does lose its ac…

This applies to any college, but an important thing to do with CC + state university is to pick a good location for your field. I'm graduating from a state university in a part of NY that isn't the city, and because of my location, I've not been able to have a single internship, or any other in person relevant work experience at all. Here's a screenshot I took a while ago: http://i.imgur.com/5vnfuY6.png

This is for a region that encompasses at least 10 counties and a population of over 3 million. But there's a big problem there: it's not NYC. The one internship that I was able to apply to was with the local power company, which I found through my school's jobs/internships section on its website, which ended up being a dubious thing that accepts applications from any major. Of course I didn't get it, being in my third year, having an amount of side projects (handmade emulators, assemblers, games, etc) and group work experience with online collaborative projects (large online projects involving multiple languages/frameworks/version control systems) far above the norm for students around here in the 3rd year, having a good gpa, etc - they either weren't accepting computer science students in the first place, or someone else in compsci got it who either had more experience or had connections inside the company.

I have to say that the classes I took at the CC and the state university were generally informative/interesting and well-taught, and the schools were nice in a lot of other ways, but the location is doing me in. The one and only person looking for anything programming-related at the career fair was someone who needed something done about an old database backend on their website that the original developers left in a broken state, and of course I never heard back from them after giving them my resume I had to spend all that time making and printing just for that one occasion.

Some will suggest remote work as a response to this problem, but in practice it's extremely rare to actually find real remote work that isn't a scam and/or someone trying to get you to work for free (this one specifically happened to me after I finally thought I found a real taker posting on the reddit online job subreddit for a while - some guy with a shady company that had changed names for years with some vague description full of meaningless technobabble, offering to pay in equity that would never materialize to anything), as someone still in college without work experience.

Now because of my location, I'm going to be at a significant disadvantage when I do move to a suitable location after graduating and try to find work. From what I've read from a lot of sources, graduating without any internships is one of the worst things you can do. I might not even find anything at all once I graduate unless I come up with some viable startup idea, and even then that'll probably just give me even more debt.

If I'd gone to college and resided there in NYC or another city in the first place, I would've had opportunities to get the necessary internship experience and I would've ended up with useful connections - recruiters from companies even go to college campuses to recruit sometimes, but only in major cities. You hear about people graduating with jobs in these companies secured already, but it's always a college somewhere like the middle of silicon valley.

Now, I'm in a position where it's questionable if I'll even be able to get that first programming job before the time since graduating becomes large enough to be a major red flag. I could easily be permanently unemployable in programming if posts like this are to be believed: https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/4yfcc0/i...

At least the minimum payments for federal student loans are easily manageable with retail or fast food wages if you live with your parents, if it comes to that.

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

#100
post #93
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I am not sure about the specifics of this case, but the Department of Education has been looking at for-profit schools much harder than non-profits. This seems fair to me. You can argue that wasted money at NFP schools ends up in someone's pocket, but bald faced "every buck not spent educating you" going into the pocket of capital seems worse. If the outcomes at FP higeher education aren't better, why not avoid fun…

Non-profits are often compared by examining their overhead as a percentage of total spending, rather than their efficacy per dollar (or overall). This holds back many great charities, and benefits others which consistently waste money on doomed projects with low overheads. It seems to be just as wrong to assume that retained earnings or dividends are wasted overhead and compare organizations on that basis alone.
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