For years now, true believers in the unrestricted Free Market God — almighty, all-seeing, all-knowing, and, of course, self-correcting (ahem) — have griped about public higher education. The graduation rates are too low at public colleges, they say; public universities are wasteful; let private, for-profit schools handle higher education, since no government can do anything as well, or as efficiently, as private enterprise. I’m willing to bet that a new study from The Education Trust won’t make the free-market fundamentalists shut up, but it should.
The study, titled “Subprime Opportunity: High Dividends, Low Baccalaureates at For-profit Colleges,” reveals that private for-profits, such as the University of Phoenix or DeVry University, are very efficient indeed. Trouble is, what they’re very efficient at is raking in federal education funding; but when it comes to producing actual graduates, well, not so much. Here’s a for-instance quote from the report: “The University of Phoenix … collected more than $1 billion in federal Pell Grant aid last year. In 2008, however, its six-year graduation rate was just 9 percent.” Nine percent. Other colleges had higher graduation rates, all the way up to DeVry’s whopping 31 percent rate. As Chris Fitzsimon at NC PolicyWatch writes, “It clearly is not about providing an education in the for-profit university world; it is about making money whether kids learn anything or not. … No public university in the state has numbers anywhere near this pathetic.” A word to the wiseguy.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2010.
You only got it half-right. Yes, U-Phoenix, Kaplan, etc. are jokes, but they are almost entirely dependent on government (i.e. non-free-market) money for their survival. 86% of Phoenix’s income is from the government. Some “free market”, huh?
From Mike “Mish” Shedlock’s website:
===
Pell Grants are based on a means test and the funding comes with no strings attached. The money does not have to be repaid. That alone should tell you the program is rife with fraud. And it is.
Regardless of grades, ability, or likelihood to graduate, students can apply for the money, take it and run, without ever attending one day of class. Many do.
Those who do use the money for education, as apposed to partying and drugs, frequently waste it on useless degrees that leave students deep in debt after graduation, assuming of course the students even graduate.
===
So what is Obama’s solution? EXPAND the Pell Grant fraud.
Have a look at Mish’s full page exploration of for-profit schools and the Pell Grant program:
globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2010/03/for-profit-schools-turn-students-into.html
Extremism in any direction shall never deliver the desired results
for our nation. All educational sectors have incredibly great benefits and will be needed for the future educational growth of our country.
One cannot criticize the for profit sector yet scavenge their inovative and disruptive teaching
techniques implement them into the traditional sector claim them as their own only to dismiss the sector that developed them.
I would invite the traditional sector to meet the standards the for profits are expected to meet.
The deck is disproportionately stacked in the traditional sector’s favor.
Let the two sectors compete on even ground lets measure outcomes. Lets see how many first time test takers from the traditional sector meet the standard that for profits are held to.
This country is in a private/public class war unionization and tenured faculty
are driving the agenda regardless of the realities or what is good for the country.
There is good and bad in both for profit and traditional education.
After all demand for for profits
was created by the traditional sector.
If they were providing everything th communities need the for profits couldn’t exist.
If there are bad apples pull them from the tree and dispose of them. Don’t burn the entire orchard down.
That’s right Ernesto. I recently taught at a for-private and at a public university at the same time. I quit the public university…even in these desperate times…what a joke. But, I’m a bit biased by years of experience with the high standards set (and actually delivered!) in the for-profit model. The public universities are simply jealous or afraid that they might actually have to improve their quality. (I’m speaking in generalities here; there is always an exception to the rule.)
John, this is old news. Everyone now knows that the statistic you quote stems from a non-representative sample.