Capella Faculty Member Named President-Elect of APA Division 50

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Ted - I'd argue that for some goods - such as education and health care - are best served through non-profits. Toothpase is certainly well served through competitive markets. The question isn't evil - the question is motive. For-profits, for example, are strongly motivated to enroll and graduate students in order to generate revenue. This isn't necessarily to society's best interests.

Example - are there any for-profit medical schools in the US? Would the quality of care among American physicians be aided by for-profit medical schools? Can anyone show me a "selective" for-profit? Can anyone show a highly ranked for-profit? Nope - for profits are chasing profits - and that typically comes with open enrollment.

Regards - Andy

 

My first impulse would be to say that Cleveland State would clearly be the advantage.

But as I reflect on it, I'm not absolutely certain. If it comes down to a choice between the two at UCLA, then whoever is doing the choosing has a very non-traditional perspective, so it would likely come down to non-degree considerations.

However, if at the beginning of the process, one had to be discarded, absent very compelling compensating factors, it would be Capella (and that is I think the real-world hurdle. Many here have served on hiring committes, at the front end you're looking for reasons to reject and right now a DL degree can be a dandy reason).

Regards,
GME

 

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Good points.

However, I think you perhaps underestimate the motivation of your run-of-the-mill non-profit when it comes to student recruitment. They live and die by enrollment, just like a for-profit.

I work for one so I can speak from experience here.

And all but the most exclusive non-profits are selective primarily because the number of seats is artifically limited by state funding, as is the number of faculty members.

I don't know about for-profit medical schools in the US. There are a lot of for-profit nursing schools, I believe. And there are plenty of licensed MDs who got their education from what I think are for-profit foreign schools. Of course, these programs are not famous for their rigor.

Selective for-profits... maybe...at least somewhat. There are a number of for-profit B&M schools of professional psychology with APA accreditation. They are modestly selective, I believe.

In the DL world, Capella's PsyD is getting more selective, I believe, as it moves toward APA approval. Once it gains that accreditation, it will become imore so, I think. That will be a function of guarding this prized status, and also because of APA's stringent guidelines about full-time faculty/student ratios.

Regards,
GME

 

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Why the special pleading for education? The objective of any organization is to make more money come in than is going out. If you operate at a loss too long, you go broke! Do you honestly believe that non-profits are really operating at a loss? That they are giving away something away for free? And, even if they were, how would that make their product/service better than the product/service offered by the guy that's making a profit?

 

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Well! If we had for-profit toothpaste companies, those evil for-profits would make toothpaste so expensive that poor people couldn't get any toothpaste! There ought to be a law saying that toothpaste companies should be forced to organize as non-profits and give away free toothpaste to poor people! Otherwise, poor people's teeth would just rot out and that would be socially unconcionable in a rich country like America!

 

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First, I suppose non-profits are chasing unprofitability and losses? Right! Second, profits don't necessarily require open enrollment nor do I see open enrollment as necessarily bad. There are two very basic pricing strategies: the mass market strategy and the prestige pricing strategy. The mass market strategy tries to chime in at the lowest price, generally has the lowest profit margin, but, being low-priced, is essentially available to a very wide market. Prestige pricing, on the other hand, sets the price very high, thus making the product available only to the few, and has a very high profit margin, but, with only a few customers, has a much smaller market and so must convince buyers of their quality/prestige in order to successfully compete in the marketplace. Either business model can make a profit. As for open enrollment, why do I care if some schools take only a select few while others accept anyone and let them try and see if they're good enough to get the degree? More than likely, a school that lets anybody try and see if they could have gotten the degree will probably have a fairly high wash rate, but so be it.

 

St. George's University School of Medicine on Grenada, by all accounts I've seen the 'class act of the Caribbean', is actually reasonably selective, and certainly shows well in the USMLE passage rates (and out of a lesser cut of their entering class, even, as some of their best students transfer to mainland U.S. medical schools and complete their degrees there). One or a couple other proprietary Caribbean schools can make some similar claims to success.

The Berklee College of Music in Boston, a family business, is the foremost institution in its field, and very certainly selective.

The Hult International Business School, also in Boston, used to be the Arthur D. Little School of Management, a graduate business school arm of that well-known consulting firm; it's now owned by an international company, EF Education, well-known for their language learning and cultural exchange programs. If kind of under the radar, I believe they've maintained a relatively good reputation under both ownerships. They're not AACSB, but they are the first U.S. MBA program with AMBA accreditation, highly valuable to British and European students.

So it can happen.

 

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Ted - The objective of a for-profit are simple - maximize shareholder wealth. The objectives of a non-profit are more complex - non-profits serve shareholders. While non-profits have to break even over time - money is only part of the equation. Service to society is typically part of the equation.

I have a great respect for the power of markets to allocate most goods. Some products - such as health and education - however don't work the same way as toothpaste.

Regards - Andy

 

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Your comments do not hold up. Money is only part of the equation for a for-profit, too. In order to make money come in, a for-profit needs to send out a product/service. Why is it wrong for an organization that provides a product/service to make a profit? As for the non-profits, anyone who thinks they're not making a profit is just fooling themselves. That which would have been called profit were they honest enough to admit that they're trying to make money goes instead into a line-item called executive bonuses.

 

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I have seen how non-profit schools get so greedy that they really don't give a damn about their students (unofficially). How is that? They grade professors on how much money they bring in via research grants, licensing from patents based on their research, and published works. They are hardly graded on how good of a teacher that professor is. A close bud of mine from a State University who holds a key position in a department tells me that one of the biggest problems the university has is that professors don't show up for classes or just send their TA's to do that. Often, these professors just give one test for the whole semester. A student's grade hangs on that one test. These professors may get a slap in the hand but since they have tenure, they cannot be fired. On top of this, there have been noble professors who have reported this to state authorities only to have retaliatory actions against them for whistleblowing and warned by politicians to "leave it alone." The university top brass looks the other way. The bottom line? Mucho dinero. Who suffers? The student. Does he get a quality education? Maybe. I find the argument of "for profit" schools intersting. I graduated with my MA and my Ph.D. from two schools that are "for profit." It would be preposterous to say that I am inferior or incompetent since I have a very high success rate in my psychotherapy practice, attested by some of the best professionals inside and outside the field, and of course, by the client/patient ultimately.

My brother attended a "for profit" medical school that was AMA accredited. He went on to do his sub-specialty in cardio-thoracic surgery at Beth Israel, which is a famous hospital for that kind of thing. He kicks serious "butt" as well as performs the most complex surgeries with one of the best records of mortality rate around.

I have friends that studied medicine at foreign "for profits" in Spain, Mexico, and even Cuba. Once they pass the most rigorous licensure USA test, then they have to practice and do their residency in USA hospitals. These doctors I personally know are quite well known as some of the best and are all diplomates in their fields. This argument about "for profits" is ludicrouse, in my humble opinion.

 

Are you sure? I was fairly sure there was no such thing. Many fine LCME (that's the relevant agency, formed in partnership between the AMA and the AAMC)-accredited medical schools are private and independent, in some sense more or less tuition-driven, and in some cases freestanding, but definitively not-for-profit. Many Caribbean medical schools that target Americans, offer clinical rotations in U.S. teaching hospitals (and these in turn are often ACGME-accredited for their residency programs, and this is an advantage even for students still on their M.D.) are for-profit, and they may be approved by state agencies or their designates to be able to those clinical placements, but no school outside the United States or Canada is accredited by the LCME. (Even Weill Cornell's campus in Qatar.) LCME standards say a medical school "should" be not-for-profit, though I note they don't, as they do on some other points, say "must."

 

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I find it somewhat hypocritical when someone who graduated from a highly expensive non-selective school, complains of other schools for being the same. The fact that for-profits are not without its critics does not change the fact that Nova is not a highly selective school and is not for those with thin wallets.

Over 30%-40% of the money for-profits make goes back into the community in form of taxes. Not-for-profits are tax-exempt. This can be a great thing for a school if the money they make is used accordingly. Now when you have a rich school like Nova that charges so much, you would think that they would have the money to improve their quality of education to Ivy League standards. But this is not happening - save for a couple of their grad programs. Nova's low U.S. NEWS rankings year after year makes you wonder where the money is really going into.

One more thing, Harvard university is among the richest schools in the entire world. Does rich = not-for-profit? Tell that to the poor people.

 

Jonathan... you may have a point there. Obviously, you know what you are talking about... I checked the med school my brother got his M.D. degree at and, what do you know?... the school is a "private, not-for-profit" institution" (see http://www.universities.com/On-Campus/Ponce_School_Of_Medicine_FirstProfessional_degree_Medicine_MD.html ). I was taken back by that! Oh well... I accept my mistake.

 

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I hadn't considered this fact. You're certainly correct. The tax burden combined with for-profits offering only high-demand degrees accounts for most of the differenc in percentages of income spent on instruction.

Regards,
GME

 

Re: Capella Faculty Member Named President-Elect of APA Divi

I certainly agree that NSU isn't as selective as I wish it were.

I can point out as an example, however, that the DBA program at NSU does require the GMAT for admission and has said "no" to some applicants - and that most of its for-profit competitors do not require the GMAT.

I certainly don't defend all non-profits - there are good, high quality non-profits and bad, poor quality non-profits. The worst of the non-profit lot are not much different than the for-profits. What I haven't seen is a high quality for-profit school.

Being non-profit doesn't mean that you don't have to consider finances. You do. But you have other objectives tied to your mission. This leads non-profits to meet broader social needs. That's why the government grants non-profits tax exempt status.

Regards - Andy

 

Re: Re: Capella Faculty Member Named President-Elect of APA Divi

But then, the same people and the same motivations can underlie a project to create social goods in a private organization that isn't a non-profit or a tax-exempt non-profit, just as much. Consider Google's new quasi-foundation, google.org, given over a billion dollars in Google shares at current market value. Director Larry Brilliant recently told Wired: "We are not really a foundation. It’s a bit of a 501(c)3, a bit of a C corp, and a bit of an academic environment. I can play more of the keys on the keyboard. A 501(c)3 can’t lobby. A 501(c)3 can’t invest in a company or build an industry. It may be that the only way to deal with climate change is to create an industry or build companies."

An addendum, though, to my post above: The Berklee College of Music, established as a proprietary school, became nonprofit in 1961. But I'm sure it hadn't been of abysmal quality before.

 

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You're right. Also, many of the biggest philantropists in the world tend to be owners of large for-profit corporations. Take a look at Bill Gates and the billions he gives away to charity.

 

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Your argument seems to be that for-profits want to produce their product as inexpensively as possible and then maximize the number of units sold. So applied to toothpaste, wouldn't that imply that the for-profit product is going to be crap, simply by definition? The implication seems to be that if people want good toothpaste, or if they want good anything, then they need to look for products made by non-capitalist industries that have higher social values.

Aren't for-profit anythings motivated to efficiently serve their chosen market? Your argument seems to imply that there is no market for high-quality academics.

Genentech is a major for-profit biotechnology company that hosts a huge research effort:

http://www.gene.com/gene/research/index.jsp

I think that everyone agrees that this work is highly respected ('ranked') both by biological scientists and by investors.

The company already has an active (and selective) post-doctoral fellows program.

http://www.gene.com/gene/research/postdoctoral/index.jsp

Now is it realistic to assume that it would all immediately melt into crap if Genentech decided to roll out a Ph.D. program? That unless they changed their tax-status, the program could only be an easy-degree joke? I think that's ridiculous.

In other words, if a for-profit company already finds it commercially valuable to host a high quality research effort, and if they see some additional value in operating an educational program as part of that effort, then there's no obvious reason to think that it wouldn't continue to be very good in scientific and academic terms.

Keep in mind that many non-profit graduate programs derive a large amount of their income from research funding. In fact, that's a big part of what makes 'top tier' research programs top tier. There may well be commercial advantage in tying that kind of thing to a particular corporate sponser and to its commercialization stream.

 

Equis is by far more popular than AMBA in Europe. AMBA is more of a British thing, it is seen in mostly old commonwealth countries(e.g. New Zealand, Australia,UK). For example Insead is Equis accredited and AACSB(which is rare in Europe) but not AMBA.

I currently live less than 30 minutes from The Arthur D. Little School (Hult) and I can tell you most people around here don't even know it exists.

 

Re: Re: Capella Faculty Member Named President-Elect of APA Division 50

Hi Glimeber. Since your comment, this pro-Capella post quickly became the largest thread on this forum. And for once, a fair and balanced one.