From 2001-2 to 2009-10, the proportion of Pell grant recipients attending for-profit colleges rose from 15 to 25 percent, while declining from 35 percent to 32 percent at community colleges. Given the much higher prices at for profit institutions, this has meant a huge -- but hidden -- tuition increase for low-income students.
Since former Congressman Steve Gunderson (R-WI) was named in January as the new head of the largest for-profit college association, APSCU, there has been talk that he might take a “kinder, gentler” approach to leading the troubled industry, which has pursued a take-no-prisoners lobbying approach in Washington.
The government is being urged to prevent universities being bought by private equity firms after the College of Law, a charity that provides teaches law courses in London and six other cities across England, was sold to a private equity firm for £200m.
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’.
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.
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.
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.
In light of weak federal regulations and lackluster completion rates at for-profit colleges, students should be armed with the kind of questions they need to ask to make sure the colleges deliver on what they promise.