Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, has been on a crusade over the past few years against for-profit colleges. You know, schools such as the University of Phoenix or the DeVry Institute, educational outfits operated by profit-seeking businesses.
The rapid growth of for-profit colleges over the past decade has been aided by billion-dollar ad campaigns on daytime television, the Internet and highway billboards across the country.
Expanding access to public education should not be about punishing wealthier nonprofit universities. Rather, the solution lies in reinvigorating our cultural and economic commitment to public education, and making better use of public money to subsidize those nonprofit entities that work to benefit our communities, rather than shareholder wallets.
Some blame the problem on for-profit universities that have proliferated in the past two decades as a reaction to increased demand for higher education. The universities, which offer as little as one degree, have earned the moniker ‘garage universities’ because they often operate from houses, where each room is a ‘faculty’.
Ameritas, launched last week, blends for-profit and nonprofit elements and has a singular focus on Latinos who are working adults. It is part of Brandman University, a private, nonprofit institution with 26 campuses in California and Washington.
This (unnamed) college demonstrates the 'dark side' of the private sector in higher education. Things can go wrong, and when they do this can be very bad - particularly for the students. This is not to say that the private sector in higher education is all like this. It can be done well, and a private alternative to publicly funded universities and colleges adds a great deal to the sector. As in the US and many other countries, private colleges can enrich the student and academic experience for all, giving diversity and real alternatives.
President Obama will sign an executive order today at a Georgia military base that will force colleges to disclose more information about financial aid and graduation rates, as well as requiring the Department of Defense to set rules for recruiting at military installations. It will also restrict the use of the term "GI Bill" in marketing and recruitment. While the order will apply to all colleges, it appears to be aimed at the for-profit sector.
Private sector colleges and universities offer unique opportunities for millions of men and women, particularly young professionals, military veterans and working parents. For our schools, the first-time, full-time student right out of high school is the rare exception rather than the norm. These institutions have enabled millions of Americans to obtain specialized degrees in a wide variety of fields. If that’s not advancing the public good, I don’t know what is.
Critics of recent efforts to regulate for-profit colleges have suggested that the Obama Administration is waging a “war” on for-profit universities. The reality is exactly the opposite: the for-profit sector is challenging a centuries-old practice of separating philanthropy from business.
While the government has its own limitations in allocating more funds to higher education, promoting private participation is unavoidable to meet the growing demand. In fact, private higher education in our country accounts for about 80 per cent of enrolment in professional courses and about one-third overall. Currently, the growth is restricted to some specific areas like engineering, medical and management education.
West Virginia’s public higher education oversight body will, for the first time, have authority to regulate and shut down struggling private and for-profit colleges in the state if the Legislature approves a new rule change in the coming months.
The government has adopted a policy of not discriminating between public, for-profit and voluntary providers of many public services. Is this the right way to go for higher education?
For-profit colleges took a hit this week in California, another sign that policy battles over the commercial higher ed sector may be shifting to the states.
A stinging court loss has stirred up a heap of confusion about the fate of the U.S. Department of Education’s “gainful employment” regulations, the first results of which were released just a week ago. And while the decision is a victory for the for-profit sector, revised gainful employment rules could affect more programs at for-profits than the standards that were invalidated Saturday by a federal judge.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy has devised a new classification system to measure the performance and characteristics of for-profit colleges and universities.
A day before the federal government's controversial new rules governing vocational programs were set to take effect, a federal judge on Saturday invalidated one of its key elements, blocking enforcement of much of the regulatory framework.
Maxie Burch knew something was wrong when his campus e-mail account stopped working one recent morning. Then a maintenance man showed up to change the locks on his office door at Grand Canyon University, where the associate professor of Christian studies had taught for eight years. At 3:30 that afternoon, two security guards and a university official arrived to escort him from the campus.
At a time when U.S. colleges stand accused of illegally profiting from unsavory associations with businesses involved in awarding federal student aid, at least one major public university has found an apparently legal partner: a for-profit university.
Apollo Group, the company that built the University of Phoenix into the largest university in the United States by catering to working adults, is now moving to serve younger college students.
In the two months since federal agents brandishing search warrants and grand-jury subpoenas swarmed ITT Educational Services' Indianapolis headquarters and 10 of its campuses, anxieties have been running high in for-profit higher education.
The fast-growing University of Phoenix fosters a high-pressure sales culture that rewards recruiters who put the most "asses in classes," intimidates those who fall short, and encourages enrollment of unqualified students, concludes a newly released report by the U.S. Department of Education.
The Career Education Corporation, one of the country's biggest for-profit higher-education companies, disclosed last month that the U.S. Department of Education had put a freeze on approving new applications for additional campuses or acquisitions while it examines the company's financial records and compliance with federal student-aid regulations.
For-profit higher education has continued to grow at a pace that once seemed unsustainable, thanks to an influx of capital, a favorable regulatory climate, and the industry's own nimble reaction to the changing demands of students.
The Education Department of the State of New York is clamping down on a fast-growing for-profit college that specializes in recruiting financially needy students who haven't graduated from high school.
In an apparent first, the for-profit higher-education industry has begun collecting data on the salaries of its college administrators. Last month, at the Career College Association's annual meeting here, it released some of the initial findings -- with some strong caveats.
After four years of debate, 2006 could be the year Congress finally takes action on proposed changes in federal student-aid laws. The outcome will be a good indicator of the for-profit higher-education industry's political clout.
The Career College Association says a public-opinion poll it recently commissioned found that many Americans consider for-profit colleges and trade schools a good alternative to traditional colleges for many young people in today's economy.
After watching the for-profit-college industry blossom by aggressively expanding to online education and catering to adult students over the past decade, many traditional colleges followed suit, enjoying new revenue opportunities and greater exposure as they reached fresh pools of students.
The New York State Board of Regents last week adopted a series of new rules that will tighten state control over for-profit colleges, which have become the fastest growing sector of higher education in the state.
Thanks to a hastily adopted stopgap measure signed into law this month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, some 400,000 students attending proprietary colleges in California will again be afforded some level of promise that the degrees and credits they earn will be recognized outside the state.
In a reversal of a recent trend, a nonprofit university has bought a for-profit college, part of the university's broader strategy of giving some of those ever-growing higher-education companies a run for their money.
Career Education Corporation, one of the country's largest operators of for-profit colleges, has announced that the U.S. Department of Justice concluded its three-year criminal investigation of the company and decided that no charges will be brought against it.
Higher-education companies have seen a mixed bag of spending sprees and lawsuits in the past several weeks, as well as the first public offering in nearly five years.
American InterContinental University has been put on probation for a year by its accreditor, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The for-profit university, which is owned by the Career Education Corporation, has bounced in and out of trouble with the accreditor over the last few years.
In legislation that Republican Congressional leaders introduced in May to extend the law that governs most federal-student aid programs, for-profit colleges came out on top.
A watchdog official at the U.S. Education Department last week urged lawmakers to "go slowly" on proposed legislation that would relax some rules that for-profit colleges must follow to participate in federal student-aid programs.
A major for-profit distance-education company has signed a licensing deal with the Acacia Research Corporation, which claims to own patents that cover all online audio- and video-streaming technologies. Officials at Acacia would not disclose the terms of the deal, but noted that institutions on average would pay $5,000 a year.
If you had typed "Grantham University" into Yahoo's search engine last week, what would have appeared at the top of the page, above the actual search results, was not a link to Grantham's Web site but an ad for the University of Phoenix -- a "sponsored result," in search-company parlance. Sponsored links to other companies offering online-degree programs also appeared to the right.
The Career Education Corporation, operator of the Katherine Gibbs secretarial schools and for-profit colleges, said two of its colleges were being reviewed by organizations that certify them. American InterContinental University was put on ''warning status'' by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and Brooks College has been put on probation by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, Career Education said.
It is discouraging to see The Chronicle run pieces with errors of commission and omission about the for-profit sector of higher education. The most recent is Joshua Woods's "Opportunity, Ease, Encouragement, and Shame: a Short Course in Pitching For-Profit Education"