State Rep. Leon Stavrinakis says quality and affordability are the two main goals for South Carolina’s higher-education institutions, and the company poised to buy the Charleston School of Law doesn’t appear to strive to meet either.
Grand Canyon University was bustling with activity on the second day of classes last week, with an on-campus student population now approaching 8,500, new dormitories and an athletic program ready to launch its first year in NCAA Division I as a member of the Western Athletic Conference.
For-profit schools — which include the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and Strayer University — began booming in the 1990s after changes in state and federal regulations made it possible for them to open campuses across the country and online.
A drop in tuition at nearby private universities has led to increasing enrollment patterns, whereas state-owned universities are hiking tuition prices while experiencing smaller enrollments.
Generous tuition discounts and aggressive recruitment campaigns are netting record freshman enrollments at some private universities in Western Pennsylvania while lower-cost, state-owned universities struggle.
U.S. private colleges and universities largely fall into two categories: those with diverse revenue streams supplemented by robust research, healthcare and fundraising, and those highly dependent on student-generated revenues, according to a new Fitch Ratings report.
A $250 million donation to Centre College won’t happen, and it’s a bit unclear why. College officials and the head of a Bermuda-based trust offered differing accounts Monday of the massive deal’s sudden collapse.
Students at for-profit medical schools in the Caribbean are amassing more debt than their peers at medical schools in the United States, and many of those students quit school early, thereby creating risk for taxpayers, according to an article in Bloomberg Markets magazine that examines trends at the Caribbean institutions. Some of those schools also pay hospitals in the United States to take their students for clinical training, a practice that has drawn the ire of some medical educators.
William Peace University, an 800-student liberal arts college in North Carolina, plans to spend as much as two-thirds of its endowment on a single piece of property.
Gov. Pat Quinn awarded Columbia $4.8 million July 31 to reimburse the college for previously completed construction projects, thus allowing it to move forward with new projects.
According to a study by Affordable Colleges Online, just one percent of the private colleges in the U.S. have a documented million-dollar return on investment (ROI): alumni whose lifetime earnings surpass those of non-degree holders by seven figures. The Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) is among that select group, with an estimated $1.62 million return after taking into account tuition and fees. That figure ranks as the third highest in the nation.
From my story today: “As the Education Department gathers a panel to rewrite controversial for-profit college regulations, the motto might as well be 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.'
For-profit colleges enjoy the fruits of a business model to die for. It's not a new model. In fact, it's very similar to the one employed by subprime mortgage purveyors Washington Mutual and Countrywide Financial that helped put the entire global financial system at risk, pitching the U.S. into the worst financial panic since the Depression. As we confront a national student loan debt now over $1 trillion and counting, that holds back their "normal" investment in first-time housing, cars and the like, it would be wise to look closely at those similarities and see what we can do about them before its too late (again).
Tuition increases are constantly in the news these days. Private colleges have become incredibly expensive (as I know personally, with a daughter currently attending one). Public colleges also have been raising tuition sharply in many cases, mostly to offset cuts in the funds they receive from state budgets. Yet, by the standards of the economic marketplace most colleges are still underpriced.
Add one more strain to the finances of US universities: a decline in enrolment. Last week the US Census reported that college enrolment declined for the first time in six years in the autumn of 2012. That, in turn, threatens higher education revenue, said Moody's Investors Service, reports Reuters.
A spate of small private liberal arts colleges are dramatically slashing their sticker prices in an effort to, they say, tell the truth about the real cost of college, help families and attract new students.
Our next presentation are from the folks at Apollo Group, APOL is the ticker. We have got two representatives from the company here; up here I have got Greg Cappelli who is the CEO of Apollo Group. In the audience, we've got Brian Swartz, who is the CFO, Senior Vice President, and we've got other members of the team as well.