Should for-profit schools have more rigorous entry requirements?

The "For Profits and Defaults" thread brought up a question that I would like to have everyone's opinion on.

Should the for-profit schools have more stringent entry requirements? I have heard it argued two ways:

1. One viewpoint states that enrollment should be wide open to give everyone a chance to enter a program. If you screen applicants too carefully, you might miss some truly gifted students that merely have trouble with the screening process but otherwise would excel.

2. The other viewpoint states that for-profit schools are taking advantage of ill-equipped students by allowing them into a program, knowing they will never make it. This position holds that schools are doing this just to earn larger profits at the expense of naive students.

What do you think?

 

Definitely a 2.

I teach adjunct, lower level VoTech for a FP. The curriculum is really good, and sometimes quite arduous. Some of the students they get there are frankly incapable of completing, and some have life management issues that preclude their ability to compete. They expect us to spend more time with these students, which often means we have to concentrate time away from the stronger students. Sometimes the better students recent this, because they don't feel they are getting the face time they pay for, and frankly that is true. A stiffer entry requirement would probably screen these out, saving them money, and create a stronger graduate base which in turn would build the school reputation, and inevitably prove more profitable.

I despise the "this is a business mentality." I don't think like that. The students don't want that attitude either.

 

"2. The other viewpoint states that for-profit schools are taking advantage of ill-equipped students by allowing them into a program, knowing they will never make it. This position holds that schools are doing this just to earn larger profits at the expense of naive students."


Something other than a pulse should be required. A proctored entrance exam would be a good start. Does U of P or Ashford make students take something like the Accuplacer? I had to take one years back; I had a few friends that were forced to take a remedial class that did not count as credit after they failed the test.

 

I think it should be open admission with an “ability to benefit” test. If the person does not have the aptitude to benefit from the material, there is no point in letting them in. My wife taught cosmetology in NC for a while and the students had to take an “ability to benefit” test which measured their ability to understand and retain the information. If students at a for-profit pass the test they have the ability to get in. If they pass with a low score maybe a conditional acceptance would be good.

 

I like that idea, an ability to benefit test. It would assess the basic knowledge required to properly complete the class or program.

 

There is no question that #2 is the prevailing mentality, at least among the larger for profits. And I know as I currently attend Ashford and have experienced it from other students. The number of enrolled students who lack general education skills, basic knowledge of things in general, and even what I would consider to be common sense is astounding. Every class that I participated in during the first year had its share of those who typed in 'texting' language and continued to do so after being reprimanded for it. For what it is worth, many of these "students" start disappearing during most of the early to mid level courses, never to be seen again. So, there is a weeding out process as you go along, at least in the business classes.

I would love to see Ashford require some sort of entrance testing to give the school some more legitimacy in the eyes of the nay-sayers out there. I will tell you that I do believe that the curriculum at Ashford in the business degree related classes is legitimate and requires the same or similar study habits as many of the more established schools. I attended my state school back in the day and am able to compare what I remember from there to the coursework that I am going through now and Ashford is just as demanding. In fact, I would rate my current journey for an MBA at Ashford as a very rigorous class load as the drop in students during the more recent courses of 33 per class down to 18 per class might suggest.

As for the better students not receiving the necessary face time they might require, this can be true but can also be remedied. I, for example, take the proactive approach in all of my classes and try to lead all of the weekly discussion responses whenever possible by asking open ended questions to the other students. Usually, this creates a response from some, the others usually are the ones that eventually disappear during the course. So be it as that is their problem. It is quite apparent that the needed face time will probably not happen any other way so you need to make it happen.

I know that I am rambling a bit here but until some sort of real admittance requirements are added to the for profits, their perceived reputations by outsiders will probably remain as is for now.

 

The advantage of open admission is, of course, that a lot of people can pursue a college education if they meet the minimum standards. But there are several points to this issue.

First, while I appreciate the caveat emptor, Darwinian nature of open admissions (people should know what they're getting themselves into, and the strongest will survive), I have a problem with the for-profits in one area: financial aid. The taxpayers are on the hook for a lot of student loan subsidies and Pell Grants taken by people who cannot complete their studies. I don't like that at all.

Second, I like open admissions, provided that the standards for graduating are maintained. While teaching for UoP for 3 years, I saw a lot of people start who clearly weren't going to cut it. But by the time they graduated--especially undergraduates--they were solid. (Grad students tended to have things together from the beginning.) The open-admissions approach creates similar results compared to competitive admissions, but it leaves a lot of bodies in its wake along the way.

Third, can the standards be maintained? Or does the school feel obligated to give the students they admit a break? It's tempting. At UoP, the break-even point for the school (where it covered its variable costs) was three--count 'em, three--classes. Then enrollment was profitable after that. Well, the 100-level courses UoP introduced for students without much transfer credit (and, not by coincidence, much more likely to fail to earn a degree) were damn easy. It took the entire 5-course introductory series just to identify the failures and grade them accordingly. The first few courses in the series were incredibly easy. But again, when you taught a 300- or 400-level course, the students were really good.

I'm cool with open admissions, except for the student aid angle.

 

A student’s past grades are not an indication of their intelligence, ability, or future. It drives me nuts when high school students (or any less-than-mature people) are judged so much on their performance during years that may be full of confusion, exploration, and parties!

 

Admittedly, I'm a hypocrite with my answer to this question:

I've benefitted from open admissions standards but at the same time I'm completely against them. I have friends that would only have gotten a college education because of open admissions but I've been in classes, on projects with and in discussion forums with people who have reduced the quality of my educational experience.

I don't think I'm alone or the only person who's had this happen or feels this way. At the end of the day the for-profits need to maintain some degree of quality and the accreditation bodies need to establish some sort of requirement for rigor in admissions. What that should be, is really the stretch because you're playing God with people's opportunities.

Hard question to answer, which is why we debate it I suppose.

 

Why not make it a poll?

 

I agree. I tend to favor open enrollment as long as the financial aid gives full disclosure of the possibility, even the likelihood, of failure.

NCU has an interesting way of handling this. They are fairly open in their enrollment but the first class you take in the business program is a sort of shake down class. Tons of work, several papers and four textbooks in 10 weeks. I was told that the idea is that, if you can make it through the first class OK, you should do well in the program. Someone told me that Capella has a similar practice, don't know if that's true or not.

 

No, you are right. But the for-profits are the ones always under attack for the practice.

 

Where do I begin!

I work for one of the large for-profits and believe me, we admit anyone with a pulse. One of my colleagues jokes that they would admit a dog if they thought they could get away with doing so. Of course, there's not enough time for me to discuss the lack of knowledge these kids have when they graduate from high school. I honestly had one student who couldn't add 1 + 2 without his calculator.

From my perspective, my institution is so driven on student numbers and keeping the students enrolled, that the quality of education becomes non-existent. If you try to maintain standards in the classroom, then you are counseled for being too hard on the students and told to lighten up. They won't come along and tell you that you must pass the student but it is certainly implied.

We had a situation where we were basically told we had to change the way we were grading a certain class. So that everyone understands, we are required to give all kinds of fluff points in our courses. In this particular course the balance of the grade was performance on tests. We were instructed that too high a percentage was weighted toward the performance on tests. A random sample look at syllabi for this same course from other colleges and unversities revealed that, even with the fluff points, our percentage was already lower than the other institutions. Of course we had no choice but to change the method of evaluating performance.

Needless to say, we have a huge turnover in faculty. Any of the faculty that truly care about teaching have left or, like myself, are looking for other jobs. This experience has truly turned me off to a career in education.

Finally, let me say I have trouble sleeping at night for what we are doing to some of these kids. We rack them up with huge sums of student loan debt knowing that the chances of them obtaining a job that will provide the kind of income necessary to repay these loans is almost impossible. I certainly wouldn't hire some of these students.

 

After 21 years working in non-profit higher education (7 at a community college and the rest at universities), I accepted a position at a small-to-medium private proprietary (i.e. for-profit) university. All students who apply are given an academic placement test for math, English, reading and (beginning in a few weeks, technology literacy. Those who do not meet our minimum scores for placement into online English and math classes are not admitted into our online programs. We have lower level face-to-face remedial math & English classes that students on conditional enrollment can take and they can be admitted if they pass these courses, but the remedial courses are not available online). Students who do not meet minimum GPA and course requirements are not admitted to our graduate programs. While we are not a "Tier 1 selective" institution, we are not open enrollment. Since I came on board, I have had to reject applications on a weekly basis.

So, not all for-profits act like the large publicly-traded organizations, some of us rely on satisfied graduates for a significant portion of our new students. You don't accomplish that by ignoring student academic needs in favor of profits.

 

Now this is amazing! Back to back I see one horrific post from ProfTim that confirms my worst fears and another post from Dr. Pina that confirms my optimistic expectations about for-profit schools. It is remarkable that these two posts appear right next to each other. ProfTim, the experience you relay is horrible. I sincerely hope that your experience is the minority, but I worry that it is not. I am extremely disheartened to learn that you have been ordered to add fluff to your curriculum. Is your school a regionally accredited school?

I'm realizing that there is a continuum that most schools fall somewhere within. One side of that continuum would focus on profit above all else and the other side would be quality above all else. Dr. Pina, I had a feeling that your school would be rank highly on the positive side of that scale.

 

That *IS* a huge problem. (more in a bit)

My experience teaching at American Intercontinental mirrors yours at UoP. This was especially true of the younger (fresh out of high-school) students who clearly didn't even know what they wanted out of a college program. For the most part many of these students didn't make it to year 2 of the program. Years ago this crowd was smaller. As other schools moved into the area (Devry, UoP, Art Institute, etc) and competition increased I saw more of these "predictable attrition". I'm not sure if the enrollment was due to a harder sales push, or targeting different demographic for admissions. I did what I could to encourage them, but some just didn't even show up for class. Of course, standards have to be maintained as well.

The exception in the younger undergrad crowd was the large number of service-members I had in my classes. Those kids had their crap together. They knew what they wanted, they asked the right questions and nearly always performed above expectations. I was quite proud of them.

Just to be clear though: Open Admissions will always have a higher drop-out rate than more selective institutions. A person needs to challenge themselves and take responsibility for the program (and the expense) that they have enrolled. Some are able to rise to this challenge. Some are not. I'd prefer to have the option for some. (Especially those who are able to do this, but are intimidated by entrance tests to the point that they would otherwise not even try.)

 

Is this really a for-profit only problem? When I was in high school, I was bored and unmotivated and didn't apply myself. I graduated with a pretty low GPA, low class standing and decent (but not stellar) SAT from the one time I took it in my Junior year. I applied to several traditional colleges and actually got accepted at a few as a "provisional student" (including Penn State University). They told me that they would let me take classes for a semester or so but I needed to prove myself by keeping my GPA above a certain level.

I don't see how this is really different than open admissions that many of the for-profits have. Even though they will let anyone in, if you don't keep up your grades at a passing level, they won't let you graduate.

 

Should open admission schools that are state-supported or non-profit have more stringent admissions requirements?