Profits and Non-profits - two last comments

I realize I've had lots to say on the subject of profits and non-profits. But here are three (I promise!) last points:

1. As noted in one of the threads, non-profits must file an IRS form 990. Go to www.guidestar.org. Enter the name of your favorite non-profit. Then feast your eyes upon all kinds of financial data - including salaries of top paid personnel. Note that non-profits must do this - it is Federal law enacted to counteract abuse of the non-profit statutes. For profits that are closely held, don't have to publicly report or answer to anyone. For profits that are publicly held, such as UoP, do have to report officer salaries, but certainly not the detail of the 990.

2. Ratio of faculty to students - I used caspar.nsf.gov to research the number of students enrolled and number of faculty at a variety of instutions. The data was the most recent year available - generally 1997. Note that in this reporting "Faculty" are defined as:

"This variable indicates the number of full-time members of the instruction/research staff whose major (more than 50 percent) regular assignment is instruction, including those with released time for research."

For Profit
Institution, # students, # faculty, ratio
----------------------------------------
University of Sarasota, 1323, 14, 94.5:1
UoPhoenix, 42524,90,472:1 **
Walden, 1199, N/A, N/A
Keller, 3536, 9, 393:1
Capella - No information reported

** note that 90 was reported in 1998, prior years were as low as 6 or 8. I believe that 1998 was a NCA review year for UoP in which the institution was criticized for their lack of full-time faculty.

Non Profit
Instituion, # students, # faculty, ratio
----------------------------------------
Nova SE, 14951, 376, 40:1 ***
Michigan State, 42603, 1861, 23:1

*** Note that for Nova Southeastern the numbers exclude the Medical school which merged into NSU a few years ago.

3. Who cares about the number of full-time faculty? Accrediting agencies, including NCA, AACSB and ACBSP are concerned. They've raised the issue with institutions up for accreditation and pushed DL institutions such as UoP to act on this matter. AACSB has put a hold on accreditation for schools that lack enough full-time faculty. State licensing boards in some states (such as Illinois and Ohio) have used the percentage of faculty that are full time as a benchmark in granting permission to grant degrees (as reported to me by an NCA representative last May).

My bottom line - Non-profits have to more fully report their operations to the public than closely held for-profits. For profits operate with a significantly higher ratio of students to full-time faculty. Sure, they employ lots of adjuncts that aren't in these numbers. But who designs the curriculum, advises students and provides continuity to programs? The lack of full-time faculty at for-profit schools in an issue with accreditors and should be with prospective students.

Regards - Andy

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Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

Are we beating a dead horse here, Andy?

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Howard Rodgers

 

Probably Howard - that why this is my last thread on this topic.

Regards - Andy

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Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

Andy, perhaps you are "beating a dead horse." I do however appreciate the cogent manner in which you've presented your viewpoint. I value the data you've presented and will consider the for-profit vs. non-profit issue in my selection of a DL school.


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David F

 

I see you are still at bashing uop, andy. Pathetic.

The problem you outlined a year or so ago was that you had a problem with for-profit educational entities. And here you wax poetic about what you can find on a non-profit. While you are accurate in what you say about for profit schools in the main, UOP is publicly traded and a lot more information is available on it than with other for profits. Nice try to paint UOP with that very broad brush and inaccurately. So it goes.

Using fulltime faculty as an indictment is okay, but when a school as UOP doesn't use that model, it is unfair to use it one-sededly and it is obvious the ratios will suffer. But you don't mention that in your blatent attempt to slam UOP. How dishonest can you get, andy? Are you approaching the bottom of your personal UOP-hell barrel?

All this vendetta on your part because you couldn't cut it with UOP. Really pathetic, borchers. Why not take up riding a bike and get a life?


jim

 

Jim - So you think I couldn't cut it at UoP? I've decided not to teach there. Instead I teach at schools that are well rated by US News and other sources, unlike UoP.

The posts in this (and other related) thread relate problems at UoP, as reported by recent students. Can you respond to these concerns instead of attacking me personally?

As for UoP being publicly traded - yes, it is. As a result top officers do have published salaries and some financial details are poted. I still maintain that for-profits have inherent finacial limitations and that non-profits have a financial edge. Students should see more services for their dollars at non-profits.
Also, y point is that non-profits have an even a higher standard of reporting than publicly traded for=profits. As for privately held for profits - they don't have to answer to anyone.

As for UoP having a different "model" - yes, they do. I think the model has something to do with making money for shareholders. Fortunately, non-profits aren't so driven.

Regards - Andy

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Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

1. On the subject of financial information disclosed:

a) While non-profits have special reporting requirements with the IRS, don't publicly traded companies have all kinds of special reporting requirements with the SEC that non-profits don't have?

b) Except in cases where a school is a suspected degree mill, what value does this information have for prospective DL students?

c) If we are supposed to form our opinions of different classes of higher education institution based on the quantity of financial information that they disclose, how does this new criterion of yours impact the many foreign DL programs? Is an equal volume of information available for British, Canadian, South African and other universities located outside the US? If not, does that mean that these schools should be avoided?


2. On the subject of ratio of faculty to students:

Your comparative statistics defined 'faculty' as follows:

"This variable indicates the number of full-time members of the instruction/research staff whose major (more than 50 percent) regular assignment is instruction, including those with released time for research."

a) Isn't that a pretty self-serving definition of university faculty? Isn't it intentionally written so as to favor what US News calls "National-Doctoral" universities? Or to be more cynical, towards the job conditions that professors like and against working conditions that they dislike?

It includes research staff that may not be teaching students at all, apart from advising a few doctoral students, so long as they have a formal faculty appointment. But it excludes part-time instructors whose entire reason for being there is teaching students.

So this manipulated "faculty-student ratio" actually bears little resemblance to the faculty-student ratio that students actually encounter in their classes.

b) You are using these comparative statistics as a way of attacking for-profits, but might the same kind of statistical effects be present when you compare different sorts of school?

Schools that offer lots of distance education are rarely the schools optimized for research or for luring big-name faculty stars with attractive working conditions. Rather, they are the schools optimized to widen educational opportunity by offering many part-time and evening programs. If that's the case, then can't your teaching-ratio argument be generalized into an argument against educational opportunity in general and distance education in particular?

 

The accreditors have also been slow adjusting to distance education. In some regions, it is still practically impossible to get a 100% DL school accredited. If we bowed slavishly to the accreditors' every wish, distance education would not even exist.

The bottom line here is how are we, the readers of Degreeinfo, supposed to interpret all this.

I think that the accreditors perform a indispensible function. But they are also associations of universities run by professional educators. So am I mistaken when I see them as working not only to protect educational quality, but also to protect the working conditions of professional educators like themselves?

Isn't a lot of this stuff that Andy is posting just a poorly disguised labor controversy? Wouldn't a lot of the reservations about for-profit education mysteriously disappear of the professors were assured of getting just what they want?

I'm coming at this from the point of view of a student, and my interests are not always those of my professors. Sorry, but it's true.

Some of the best courses that I have ever taken in my life have been taught by part-time faculty. I am simply not willing to deny them the recognition that they deserve as teachers.

 

Cheers! I agree.....

 

If you think that making money is so disreputable, why did you choose to earn a DBA?

 

Making money isn't disreputable - in business. But in other areas of life it is. In religion, for example, the church isn't a business and shouldn't be operated like on. Education isn't a business either, but rather involves a very special relationship between teacher and student. Turning education into a business has a potential to damage that relationship.

Regards - Andy

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Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

Andy, the reason I attack you is relative to your educational bigotry. Why bigotry?

You remind me very clearly of a person I know who does not mike the name Micmak and whenever a Mickmak gets into trouble or has a problem, he says that Mickmak is just like all the other Mickmaks, rotten to the core.

In your case, your bigotry is addressed to the University of Phoenix. You seize upon every opportunity presented by a negative comment to condemn the entire system while ignoring all the good comments made, even in this limited forum. You typify the experiences of nearly 90,000 current students by the bad experiences of a very, VERY, small numer of individuals.

That you have chosen this path is a clear indicator of your shallowness in this subject area, your lack of balance in reportage and a number of other things, including your initial dishonesty, if I recall correctly when you said you had taught at UOP for a number of years and which turned out to be about one year, right? Because of your personal failings at UOP, your have chosen to undertake a petty vendetta.

In the words of the Great bard, were I like thee, I'd thow away myself. (Timmons of Athens).


jim

 

Hmmm, awaiting your condemnation of the Mormon Church.


jim

 

In a similar vein, psychotherapy involves a special relationship, but try not paying your fee for a while and you'll see just how business-like this "special relationship" can become. The fact is that you can't pretend that money isn't a large part of both kinds of "relationships."
Jack

 

I have attended a total of eight institutions of higher learning in my undergrad and grad journey. I can assure you that whatever relationships I may have had with any of my many teachers, those relationships were neither strengthened nor diminished based on the particular tax status of the institution that employed them.

Paul C.

 

Well Andy, my hat is off to you.

While it appears that many around these parts do not seem to mind sacrificing academic standards to make a buck, spend their time shopping around for the easiest RA degrees available from the least respected schools in the nation... you sir are a voice in the wilderness, speaking out and standing up for academic quality, rigor and integrity. If you endur much more ridicule, I would suggest spending your time amongst more enlightened folk.

 

Jim - I taught for a number of years at UoP, starting in 1991 and ending in 1998. Please don't state that I was dishonest on this point. You obviously don't know what you are talking about.

Andy

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Andy Borchers, DBA
NSU (1996)

 

Okay, Andy, I was off on this point but bang-on vis-a-vis your anti-UOP bigotry, your concentration on the any negative aspects to the total exclusion of the good comments made here by far many more people than the few you have selected to support your UOP bashing.


jim

 

Andy:

Do you have an online link to your paper "Organizational Commitment of Part-time and Full-time Faculty" (A.S. Borchers and J. Teahen, 2001)? I'd like to take a gander.

 

I'd be interested also.


Bruce