bookmarks  67

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    Despite higher fee, these schools are a necessity till we develop alternatives Last week, we delved into whether the furore over school fee is justified. Taking it forward, in this second part, we look into whether private ‘for-profit’ schools are flourishing despite government and government-aided schools being affordable. How big is the private school sector? According to a report by Ernst & Young — ‘Private Sector’s Contribution to K-12 Education in India’, 25 per cent of all schools (Kindergarten to Class 12) in India are under private management. Their enrolment has crossed 40 per cent (urban and rural together) of the total enrolment. This number increases to 55 per cent when you look at only the secondary and higher secondary enrolment. The Annual Status of Education Report 2016 points out that this is not just an urban phenomenon. Enrolment in private schools (age 6 to 14) even in rural India is increasing — from 18.7 per cent in 2006 to 30.8 per cent in 2014. Every poor family spends a disproportionate amount of its earnings to send her child to a private school. Clearly, private schooling is big and is growing in both urban and rural India. Government Spend A study by Ambrish Dongre and Avani Kapur titled ‘India’s Spend on Elementary Education’ states that the government (Central and across 16 States) median spend on elementary education (Class 1 – 8) works out to Rs 11,225 per student enrolled in 2011-12. This looks quite low because it is the average across India and across all types of schools in rural and urban areas. A better benchmark is ‘government-spend’ in Kendriya Vidyalayas that provide the best quality among government schools. Elementary school education (Class 1 to 8) is free in KVs and is subsidised thereafter. The fee notified by the KV Sangathan is nil for these classes. From Class 9 to 12, a tuition fee of Rs 200-400 per month is claimed from boys. In addition, Rs 650 per month is taken for computers and Vidyalaya Vikas Nidhi, with exemptions for certain categories of students.
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Educational companies have seen their stock surge since the election. While the market as a whole has done well since Nov. 8, major companies including K12 Inc., Career Education Corp., DeVry Education Group Inc. and Capella Education Co. have grown faster than indexes. Laureate Education, Inc., which educates over one million post-secondary students in dozens of countries internationally, also concluded its (second) IPO in recent days. The company was publicly traded until 2007 when a group of investors took it private. Optimism and growth in the for-profit education market could mean changes to how the public thinks about higher education and career readiness. Many of the bigger higher education corporations tend to be more nimble in where they set up shop and more likely to build partnerships with business, said Guilbert Hentschke, a dean and professor emeritus at the USC Rossier School of Education. Many of the firms are focused on ensuring a local labor market is stocked with a stream of specifically accredited workers, compared to traditional non-profit four-year degree programs focused on the liberal arts. There are also signs of increasing collaboration between for-profit education companies and private non-profit institutions. Yesterday, Vanderbilt University joined with dozens of other schools in partnering with 2U Inc. to launch online degree offerings through its graduate school of education program. A big reason the for-profit education sector has seen renewed buoyancy in recent weeks is tied to the end of the Obama era. Hentschke, who is also affiliated with the Ernst & Young consultancy Parthenon-EY, said in an interview that the new administration and the new education secretary, Betsy DeVos, have not given a specific indication of their attitude toward for-profit education. Nevertheless, Trump’s business-oriented disposition and DeVos’s preference for free market fixes to the education system have not been lost on investors. The mere “absence of negative signals” represents a major shif
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Laureate Education just became the first IPO of a company that's legally allowed to sacrifice profit in exchange for purpose, though the for-profit education industry has had a hard time finding any purpose at all. On February 1, Douglas Becker made history when he rang the opening bell of the Nasdaq. His company, Laureate Education, Inc.—the world’s largest for-profit college network, with more than 1 million students enrolled at over 200 campuses in 28 countries—had just launched an initial public offering. IPO filings happen every day, but this is the first public benefit corporation to ever be publicly traded. Laureate is listed on the exchange as LAUR and raised $490 million by offering 35 million shares at a price of $14, slightly lower than expectations. Benefit corporations are distinct from a traditional corporation. Rather than a singular focus on creating financial value, a benefit corporation is explicitly mandated to pursue positive social and environmental impact along
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    MADISON, Wis. — Gov. Scott Walker is renewing his push to eliminate the state board that regulates for-profit colleges. The executive budget Walker unveiled Wednesday calls for eliminating the Educational Approval Board by January 2018 and transferring its duties to the Department of Safety and Professional Services. The governor proposed getting rid of the board in his 2013-15 executive budget as well, arguing then that doing away with it would lift unnecessary financial and regulatory burdens on for-profit schools. Opponents countered that the board plays a key role in overseeing the schools and the Legislature's finance committee ultimately nixed the idea as it revised Walker's budget. The board's executive secretary, David Dies, didn't immediately respond to messages seeking comment on the new proposal.
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    For those that draw the line in the sand at $5.00 for a “penny stock,” Aspen Group, Inc. (OTCQB:ASPU) may be able to graduate out of penny-stock-land soon. Trading as low as $1.52 last July (and $1.21 in January 2016), the company has found a solid uptrend to tip the scales at $4.44 in December for its current 52-week high. After a pullback from that high, shares are moving up again, including a 7.7% climb in morning trading to $4.04 on Friday. Shares are being driven by the New York City-based post-secondary education company issuing two substantial pieces of news after Thursday’s closing bell. First, in the third quarter of fiscal 2017 (ended January 31, 2017), Aspen reported revenue of $3.74 million, up 73% from the year prior quarter. The company swung to a profit, with net earnings of $7,377 versus a net loss of $689,718 a year earlier. Aspen also had a record number 825 new student enrollments during the latest quarter, a 50% year-over-year increase. Separately, the company said it signed a letter of intent to acquire an unnamed regionally accredited for-profit university based in California for $9.0 million. Payment will come in the form of $2.5 million in cash, $2.0 million in convertible debt and $4.5 million in ASPU common stock. $900,000 of the $2.5 million cash component will be lent to a newly-formed entity controlled by the loan’s guarantor who owns 100% of the voting power of the university.
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Dive Brief: Career training programs will have until July 1 to appeal the U.S. Department of Education for reconsideration of compliance under current gainful employment and revenue reporting guidance enacted by the Obama administration, a signal that the Trump administration is holding to promises of massive deregulation in the federal education agency. The extended review period will allow schools the chance to prove they were unfairly assessed in previous years, under rules requiring that graduates' loan payments do not exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of total earnings, metrics that many for-profit college advocates say was an unfair rule designed to disrupt for-profit impact in higher education. For-profit leaders applauded the extension, but opponents say the delays will allow more students to potentially be defrauded by predatory recruitment schemes and false information about postgraduate outcomes. Dive Insight: The extended review of the gainful employment policies will have impact throughout the higher education sector, as community colleges and schools which disproportionately serve poorer students will now have time to provide more context about graduation rates and employment outcomes which previously may not have been possible due to time constraints. Additionally, the extension signals the first sign of regulatory repeals for higher education, one of the only signature details of President Trump's higher education platform during the campaign season, and a recurring theme shared by Congressional higher education leaders. For most institutions, this is a positive sign towards reducing costs and manpower committed to compliance efforts, but for smaller institutions with missions to serve underrepresented populations, it may be a lifeline.
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Many for-profit colleges are accused of broken promises, high prices and not preparing students for the workforce. The federal government has increased its regulation of them. It's sparking a big debate in Washington, and two of the main players are North Carolina politicians. The new chair of the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-- N.C., District 5) already said the rules need to go. The way she sees it, the Obama administration "intentionally targeted and sought to dismantle career colleges and universities with unnecessary regulations." She praised for-profit schools, calling them "responsive higher learning institutions." Action 9 investigator Jason Stoogenke found her biggest donor is a for-profit college, Full Sail. Full Sail is based in Florida and focuses on entertainment and media, offering degrees up to master's. When Stoogenke asked Foxx whether that's a conflict of interest, she emailed, "When an individual or industry offers me their support, they're endorsing my views, not the other way around." On the other side, 18 attorneys general, including North Carolina's Josh Stein, are urging the federal government not to go easy on for-profit schools. They sent the federal government a letter, saying undoing the regulations would mean "open season" on students. "We're very concerned," he said. "They're preying on people's dreams." LETTER When students can't pay back debt, taxpayers get stuck with the bill. Some wonder how much debt students rack up at for-profit colleges. The Brookings Institution created a list of 25 colleges where students are the most in debt. More than half are for-profit schools. Charlotte School of Law, DeVry, ITT Tech, Brookstone and Kaplan have all had problems in recent years, either financial, legal, or both. "It's been really hard," Charlotte Law student Stefanie Quinde said. "I understand it's a business. But at end of day, the interest of the students, it's, it's a big priority." "I think the regulat
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    The Trump administration is delaying implementation of one of the signature policies of the Obama-era crackdown on for-profit colleges. The Department of Education announced Monday night it was targeting the Obama administration rule aimed at holding career-training programs accountable for getting students decent jobs and earnings. To be in compliance with the regulations, career-training programs, which are largely at for-profit colleges, need to graduate students whose loan payments don’t exceed 20% of their discretionary income or 8% of their total earnings. Programs that don’t fit this criteria for multiple years could lose access to federal financial aid. Career-training schools will now have until July 1 to file appeals to the program debt-to-earnings ratios published by the Department earlier this year, as part of the enforcement of the gainful employment (GE) rule. Originally, their appeals were due Friday, March 10. The schools will also now have until July 1 to publish disclosures about their debt-to-earnings ratio that are required by the new law. Before this decision, the programs had until April 3 to post those disclosures. The gainful employment rules were a long fought victory for the Obama administration in its quest to crack down on for-profit colleges, which officials and advocates have accused of loading students up with high debt loads for questionable outcomes. The for-profit college industry fought the regulations in court and the Obama administration ultimately prevailed. But the Trump administration’s embrace of an increased role for the private sector in education has had supporters of efforts to crack down on for-profit colleges worried that the new rules could be in jeopardy — and investors betting on for-profit schools. The delay is the first signal that that speculation may be correct. “This is a sign that does nothing to dispel concerns that this administration will be sufficiently aggressive in protecting students,” said Ben Miller, the senior director of postsecondary educati
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    The UK government will decide whether BPP University should continue to be eligible for university title and degree-awarding powers, after its US owner was sold to a private equity consortium for $1.1 billion (£899 million). BPP, one of only three for-profit universities in the UK, saw the sale of its owner, Apollo Education Group, completed last month. The deal, which takes the company private, also includes its big US for-profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix and Western International University. The new owners are a consortium including Vistria Group, a private equity firm run by Marty Nesbitt – a Chicago businessman sometimes described as Barack Obama’s best friend – and former US deputy education secretary Tony Miller. The consortium also includes “funds affiliated” with private equity firm Apollo Global Management, according to the Washington Post. The change of ownership for BPP comes as the UK government nears the final stages of steering through Parliament the Higher Education and Research Bill, which aims to further open England’s sector to new private and for-profit providers. While ministers believe that new providers are needed to introduce greater competition for established universities, critics believe creating more for-profit universities that can go through repeated changes in ownership may have an impact on quality for students. An independent review of BPP will now be submitted to the Higher Education Funding Council for England, including checks on whether the institution continues to meet student number and governance requirements. Hefce will, in turn, advise the Department for Education on the institution's future status. Carl Lygo, BPP's vice-chancellor, said that "nothing has changed" at the university since the sale was announced. "Neither of the new owners has any record in delivering higher education in the UK and so their plans will be carefully scrutinised by the Department for Education," Professor Lygo said. "This is not a rubber stamp process." A DfE spok
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    According to a Chronicle analysis of data released on Tuesday, 177 private colleges that grant degrees failed a U.S. Education Department test for financial responsibility in the 2014-15 academic year. That’s 18 more than the previous year. Of the institutions that failed, 112 are nonprofit, and the remaining 65 are for-profit. In the previous year, 93 of the 159 failing institutions were nonprofit. The department considers an institution’s debt and assets, among other factors, in giving it a score ranging from -1 to 3. Scores lower than 1.5 are considered failing. The department’s methodology in devising the scores has drawn sharp criticism in the past from some higher-education groups. The latest scores cover the institutions for fiscal years ending between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. Several of the colleges have closed since the 2014-15 academic year. Some, like Dowling College, in Oakdale, N.Y., previously failed the financial-responsibility test, while others, like Saint Joseph’s College, in Rensselaer, Ind., passed it.
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    The secretary of Wisconsin’s Department of Safety and Professional Services sought to reassure the state’s for-profit college oversight board Tuesday that a proposal to shift responsibility for regulating those schools to her agency would not weaken supervision of the industry. But members of the Educational Approval Board were skeptical of whether the state department would have the expertise to scrutinize for-profit schools and protect their students, and voted to oppose the plan in Gov. Scott Walker’s budget. “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” board chairman Don Madelung said. “We’re not broken.” Walker’s proposal would eliminate the agency’s board and shift its staffers’ jobs to DSPS. Speaking to EAB members, DSPS officials pitched the move as a way to complement the agency’s efforts by maintaining its 6½ full-time staff positions and pairing them with the larger department’s legal counsel, investigators, consumer complaint division and other resources. “If the EAB does go away, nothing else would,” Secretary Laura Gutierrez said. “I don’t think the regulations, I don’t think your best practices (or) the way you do business would go away. “We would be protecting the students, and that would be our focus.” Consumer advocates and government regulators have been critical of the for-profit college industry, saying some of its schools use misleading marketing and offer expensive programs that are of questionable value to graduates on the job market. After facing increased scrutiny during the Obama administration, experts anticipate for-profit schools will experience less federal oversight under President Donald Trump, which could make the role of state regulators more significant. Walker advanced a similar plan two years ago to shutter the EAB, which legislators later removed from the budget — something Madelung praised Tuesday as “common sense.” Unlike the proposal Walker announced this year, that plan would have consolidated the work of the EAB’s staff and board into a single part-time employee. Sti
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    The Trump administration has taken its first shot at rules designed to protect students from expensive, low-quality colleges and career training programs. Less than a month after Betsy DeVos was sworn in as its top official, the U.S. Department of Education announced Monday evening that it would delay until July 1 an effort to crack down on career training programs that load students up with unpayable debt. The biggest winners: the more than 800 higher educational programs that claim to lead to “gainful employment” but flunked the department’s January excessive debt test—mostly for-profit art and cosmetology schools. These programs can now continue to recruit applicants (at least until July 1) without having to warn them about alumni’s oppressively high debt loads. The schools can also take this extra time to seek data showing that their graduates’ student loan bills are actually below the official “excessive debt” cutoff. That means bills must be no more than 12% of the average student’s gross earnings, as reported to the Social Security Administration, and no more than 30% of their discretionary income. That means, for example, that students considering entering, say, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s two-year Associate’s program in graphic design won’t necessarily be warned that the typical graduate of the program has taken on about $40,000 in debt, but finds a job paying only about $22,000 a year. The monthly financial reality for such graduates is grim. Their before-tax monthly salary works out to about $1,900. The monthly payments on a standard 10-year student loan repayment plan top $400 – or more than 20% of their gross earnings. The department said it would use the extra time to “further review the [Gainful Employment] regulations and their implementation.” The action puts the brakes on one of many last-minute moves by the Obama administration. In January, the Department of Education issued an analysis of the earnings and student debt levels of more than 8,600 higher education programs that offer pr
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Current higher education policy in England is based on “bad pub economics” and ministers have failed to learn the lessons from international developments, according to a leading academic. Lorraine Dearden, professor of economics at the UCL Institute of Education and research fellow in education at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, lamented England’s 2012 trebling of fees to £9,000 and current plans in the Higher Education and Research Bill to ease the entry of new private providers as being driven by a desire to create competition. "There are very, very good economic reasons why the market alone cannot be allowed to operate in higher education,” said Professor Dearden in a keynote speech at the Central for Global Higher Education’s annual conference in London on 1 March. She cited “credit market failures” for student lending that means government has to provide loans, the fact that higher education brings “social returns” as well as private returns, “risk and uncertainty” caused by student reluctance to borrow, and “information problems” that mean prospective students cannot know the costs and benefits of their higher education until much later in life. The government’s misguided notion that price competition between universities would occur under the £9,000 cap – when in reality all have ended up charging the maximum – was “bad pub economics”, Professor Dearden said. The £9,000 fees policy failed to take into account the fact that income-contingent loans meant the repayment risk from higher fees was borne by government rather than universities or students, she added. “If you want to allow a range of fees, what is important is that the higher education institutions need to share some of the risk of non-repayment,” she continued. That would mean a system that better reflects the “true costs and benefits” of courses, Professor Dearden said. She added that there were currently “lots of economists trying to work out” how to ensure that universities “have skin in the game”. Professor Dearden also accused Jo Jo
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    The Trump administration just handed an olive branch to the battered industry. he Trump administration appears poised to undo one of its predecessor’s most ambitious attempts to rein in for-profit college rapacity. The Department of Education is delaying the so-called “gainful employment” rule, in place since 2015, the Wall Street Journal’s Josh Mitchell reports. Under the Obama-era rule, the Department of Education would shut off the financial-aid spigot for higher education institutions if their typical graduate reported spending more than 30 percent of after-tax cash or 12 percent of total income on student loan payments. In other words, if a college saddles too many of its students with debt and shabby job prospects — if graduating classes debt-to-income ratios don’t look good for a few consecutive years — it will be barred from receiving Stafford loans, Pell grants, and other forms of taxpayer funding for higher education. The more than 800 schools that the Department of Education threatened in January with sanctions under the rule—98 percent of which are for-profit institutions like Full Sail University and University of Phoenix — will now have until July 1st to hire independent auditors to investigate whether the government’s damning data on their students career outcomes is wrong or flawed. Since most for-profit colleges derive most of their revenue from students’ federal financial aid packages, thousands of the schools may have eventually had to close their doors without reconsideration by the Department. The extended timeline to appeal, and the department’s promise to review the rule, could be a lifeline for an industry that was facing an unprecedented crackdown via states attorneys general lawsuits and federal enforcement actions. But, as Pacific Standard reported in 2015, this wouldn’t be the first time the industry has bounced back from a regulatory beating. For-profit college parent companies stocks have surged since Donald Trump’s election in November. Now, shareholder faith looks like it could g
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    President Trump’s postelection agreement to pay $25 million appeared to settle the fraud claims arising from his defunct for-profit education venture, Trump University. But a former student is now asking to opt out of the settlement, a move that, if permitted, could put the deal in jeopardy. Lawyers for the student, Sherri Simpson of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Monday asked a federal judge in San Diego to reject the settlement unless former students are given an opportunity to be excluded from the deal so they can sue Mr. Trump individually. If the judge, Gonzalo Curiel, decides that Ms. Simpson and potentially others should have that chance, legal experts say it could disrupt the settlement because Mr. Trump and his lawyers saw the deal as a way to resolve all of the claims, once and for all, to avoid a trial and distractions to his presidency. “If even one person could opt out of the settlement and force a trial, that might, in fact, crater the deal,” said Shaun Martin, a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law. “I’m sure Judge Curiel will be aware of that.” The agreement, announced in November, appeared to resolve years of hotly contested litigation, including two federal class-action cases in San Diego and a separate suit by Eric T. Schneiderman, the New York attorney general. Students maintained that they were cheated out of tuition through high-pressure sales tactics and misleading claims about what they would learn. At one point during the contentious case, Mr. Trump questioned Judge Curiel’s impartiality based on his Mexican heritage. Mr. Trump, who has rejected the claims and did not acknowledge fault in the settlement, posted on Twitter after the settlement announcement that he “did not have the time to go through a long but winning trial on Trump U.” Patrick Coughlin, a lawyer representing the class-action plaintiffs, said that it was a “terrific settlement” and that the objection seemed “politically motivated.” He said he feared that the objection could result in delays for students
    7 years ago by @prophe
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    Buoyed by the ascendancy of Donald Trump, America’s predatory for-profit colleges are renewing their multi-front fight to destroy a key measure to hold them accountable: the gainful employment rule. The new battle plan includes pushes in Congress and before the Betsy DeVos Department of Education, plus two new lawsuits aimed at the regulation, including one, in Arizona, that has not been previously reported. It looks like this harmful effort is rapidly gaining traction. It took the Obama administration nearly eight years of battling well-paid for-profit college lobbyists and lawyers to finally enact and implement this regulation, which has a simple, common sense premise: Career training programs that, year-after-year, leave graduates mired in overwhelming debt should lose eligibility for taxpayer-funded student grants and loans. Career education should make people financially better off, not worse off, and the rule aims to channel money away from programs that do harm — and channel it toward those honest, effective colleges that are genuinely helping students build careers. For decades, many for-profit colleges, through a toxic mix of high prices, low quality, and weak job placement, have promised more than they could deliver, and yet have been getting billions annually in federal aid, much of it spent on advertising and profits, rather than education. Many veterans, single moms, displaced factory workers and miners, and others struggling to build a better future have been deceived and abused by unscrupulous college owners, whose offices are in Wall Street suites as well as strip malls. The final gainful employment rule does not demand much; only the worst programs flunk its test comparing graduate earnings with debt levels. The first round of results, reported in January, showed that 98 percent of the flunking programs were at for-profit colleges. The for-profit colleges have never stopped trying to overturn the rule, even after federal courts decisively rejected two separate industry lawsuits. Now, however,
    7 years ago by @prophe
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publications  41