Last month the Senate education committee held what is expected to be the first in a series of hearings on the growth and risks of for-profit higher education. The hearing, which was stacked with critics of for-profit colleges, came a week after the education committee of the House of Representatives held a hearing focused on accreditors’ oversight of online learning. “We have a responsibility to ensure that taxpayer dollars are being spent wisely, and that for-profit colleges are serving students, not just shareholders,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate committee, in his opening remarks. Shown the 15-year default data for for-profits after the hearing, he appeared taken aback. “Whoa,” he said.
Community colleges have a high default rate too, 31% compared to 40% in for-profits, but a higher percentage of for-profit students need loans, and the loans are bigger:
Only 10 percent of community-college students took out federal Stafford loans—the most common type of federal education loan—in the 2007-8 academic year, and most borrowed less than $10,000, according to the College Board. At for-profit colleges, 88 percent of students took out Stafford loans, and nearly 20 percent of associate-degree recipients graduated with more than $30,000 in debt. Those borrowing rates reflect the higher cost of attending a for-profit college. In the 2009-10 academic year, the average for-profit institution charged $14,174 in tuition and fees, according to the College Board, and the average community college only $2,544.”I think you’re looking at very different numbers,” Ms. Mellow said. “They’re numbers that for-profit colleges do not want us to look at.”
I’m completely sympathetic to the adult-learner/retraining group, which is where for-profits are directing marketing, because I was one. I attended a series of community colleges part time, then a university part time, then law school, combined with minimum wage jobs and interrupted by a long stint in the Postal Service.
At the time I was doing all that, there were few for-profit “options” and little or no marketing directed to “non traditional students”. There’s a community college 25 miles from where I’m sitting, and I live in the middle of nowhere. Reading this, I’m grateful I didn’t have a for-profit “option”, and I’m not clear why a growing for-profit higher education sector is any improvement on the public community college route I took.
If we needed more capacity in higher education or certificate programs for what looks to be endless cycles of worker displacement and then retraining, why didn’t we build on the existing public (or private) non-profit system?
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