The War on For-Profit Colleges

You make some valid points. I would submit, however, that ANY calling of students for recruiting purposes is not ethical/wrong, and this is why.

If a person expresses interest in any given school and chooses to not pursue the opportunity, they, in my opinion, are doing so for one of two reasons: 1. The have changed their mind for one reason or another or 2. They're too flaky/irresponsible/lack motivation to be successful in college.

In my opinion, neither one of these students is going to be successful and the school (regardless of tax status) has no business burying them in debt for a degree that they probably won't finish.

 

Yes... I kind of think there is a reason why for-profits have a poor reputation though. I think a few unscrupulous for-profits (UoP) have made a bad name for everyone. My best friend attended UoP and told me it was "So easy it was embarrassing." She said there is very, very minimal work required and as long as you submit work, it's pretty much impossible to fail a class. She also paid about $30k for a 2 year degree. This is a far cry from your average state university. I think that's why they have a bad reputation. I'm not saying all for-profits are like that, I'm just saying that the biggest and best known ARE, so it makes the rest look bad. I don't think it's a matter of snobbery on the parts of people who dislike the way these schools are run - I think it's a matter of.... fact.

 

I also think the "stigma" concern is overblown. I have been teaching for the past 15 years at various schools and have never once been questioned about the 3 graduate degrees I have earned online. The positions I have were all given to me because of my graduate degrees, and all have been accepted by employers and even respected, to some extent. At least in my case, nobody seems to care whether the degrees were earned online at for-profit schools. They are regionally accredited and that is all that has mattered.

 

If there's a war, I'm ready to enlist. Almost all for-profit colleges are a rip-off.

 

OK, so we have a war on for-profit colleges. First of all, merely being a non-profit college does not necessarily mean that you are any more moral than the for-profit college down the street. There are three things that being a non-profit does mean. First, being a non-profit means that you do not have to pay taxes. If you are a for-profit, you have to pay taxes. Not much, maybe, with all the tax breaks for the rich. And you can qualify for a bunch of tax loopholes. But you must pay some taxes. Second, if you are a non-profit, you can have an all-volunteer faculty. In other words, non-profits are allowed to have slaves. If you are a for-profit, you must pay your faculty something. Niot much, necessarily. You can pay what basically amounts to slave labor. You can pay your faculty so little that your professors can qualify for food stamps. Or, if your professors are much too proud to accept charity, your professors can actuaslly end up starving to death. And this happened to a 72-year-old English professor at some supposedly Christian university. Third, if you are a non-profit, you can beg for spare change in the form of endowments. If you are a for-profit, if you have to go begging for spare change, you have to give your donors shares of stock in the company. Just sayin'.

 

Almost? Okay . . .

Which specific for-profit colleges, in your opinion, are not a rip-off? And, for that matter, how are you defining the term rip-off?

 

So are most private non-profit colleges. When do you begin your war on them?

Here's the thing, my present employer loves Capella for graduate degrees. If you are an employee and want the company to pay for a Masters, if you enroll in Capella it's no questions asked. Otherwise we have to do a review process, you have to write an essay about why you chose that program at that school. It's a whole thing. The company's preferred undergrad sequence involves taking courses at the community college and then transferring to a nearby state school (or Empire State College, if you prefer DL). There is presently a push to add Excelsior to the preferred list as well.

My last employer had a similar stance toward DeVry's Keller School of Management. Their preferred (fast-track approval) undergrad programs were UofP at that time.

My current employer has 5,000 employees in the state of New York. If you look at subsidiaries and other affiliated companies, we have over 50,000 employees worldwide.

My previous employer has over 30,000 employees worldwide.

Naturally, not ALL of the employees are going to earn degrees at all. And some are going to bypass the fast-track to get approval for state schools, local private colleges or just other online programs. But still. Whenever the DeVry rep came to the office and set up in the break room, they often had a line of employees.

So let's think about what defines a "ripoff." It may not be the best value for the companies footing the TA bill. But for the student it's a pretty excellent value proposition.

When I earned my undergrad degree, it was the early 2000s. Price was much less a consideration to me. I needed flexibility. I was stationed overseas and I deployed frequently. Standard semesters weren't workable. So, I went out and I had a checklist:

1) It needed to have regional accreditation
2) It needed to be fully online
3) It needed to have non-standard semesters
4) Accelerated (shortened semesters) were a plus

I left CTU with $10,000 in student loan debt. The other $10,000 I was saddled with? That was from earning my associates degree from the University of Scranton. There are more options now. There weren't so many back then. But I also didn't rely solely on federal financial aid. I had military TA. I had the GI Bill. But for Scranton, besides federal student aid, I had student loans and one semester I had to put on my dad's credit card.

But hey, let's look at some numbers while we talk about ripoffs...

Ithaca College

It's a good school. Private, non-profit and living in the shadow of its Ivy league neighbor.

Total tuition cost for four years? $39,532. Living on campus? Make that $53,864.

Wilkes University

Undergrad tuition is $14,875 per year. That's $59,500 for a bachelors degree in tuition only.

Total Program cost at Colorado Technical University? $58,500.

Total Program cost at Capella? $66,780 (I took their highest credit rate of $371 and multiplied by the number of credits). Potentially lower if you rocket through their FlexPath. Also, I'm seeing steep discounts for veterans and they seem to knock $8k off the top if you sign up "today."

My point is that all for-profit schools look like a "ripoff" in all of these news reports because their tuition is almost universally compared to community colleges and state schools. That's not really an accurate comparison. Private non-profits are charging the same screw-job tuition rates and are also pumping loads of unemployable graduates into a saturated job market.

Or are you going to tell me that a student with a B.A. in Pop Culture is better positioned than someone with a CPA qualifying B.S. in Accounting from Capella?

And before you tell me how "worthless" a degree from a for-profit school is, remember that we are on the internet right now and all have the ability to pull out some rather successful individuals with degrees from for-profit schools. Just yesterday I was looking at how many CTU undergrads went on to law school. The day before I was examining how many people with Ivy League undergrad degrees had MBAs from UofP (not many, but there were a few and they all had very good jobs). I can go out and pull all of the Capella, Northcentral, Trident and UofP doctorates working at private non-profit universities, if you absolutely insist.

If you are looking for a non-violent "war" to fight I would recommend taking on global hunger, gender inequality or illiteracy. Your present cause doesn't seem so righteous.

 

What is or was the purpose of establishing non-profit taxpayer-supported state universities?

 

I don't seriously believe that you don't know the answer to your own question but in order to play along with your game I'll give you this from the FSU website.

"The Legislature of the State of Florida in a Legislative Act of January 24, 1851, provided for the establishment of the two institutions of learning, their first purpose to be "the instruction of persons, both male and female, in the art of teaching all the various branches that pertain to a good common school education; and next to give instruction in the mechanic arts, in husbandry, in agricultural chemistry, in the fundamental laws, and in what regards the rights and duties of citizens."

https://www.fsu.edu/about/history.html

It's not going to be substantially different for any other state university system. But you knew that.

 

Nice find. :smile:

Colleges and universities were very few in number in those early days. Are subsidized taxpayer dollars still needed to achieve those noble original goals or have things changed?

 

Nearly all organizations (with few exceptions), be they federal taxation exempt (re Internal Revenue Code section 501(a)) from taxation organizations (non-profit) Annual Exempt Organization Return: Who Must File or non-exempt (i.e., for-profit organizations must pay taxes on their net income from taxation are required to file annual returns or file an annual information return (nonprofit) of their income and expenses with the IRS.

Not being a CPA, tax attorney or EA, I’m not at all qualified to present all the in’s /outs and/or complexities of IRS Code, accounting methods (i.e., for-profit quarterly income statements or statements that center around their (NPOs) activities only)). Yet, nonprofit and for-profit may well be fundamentally measured as a vocabulary of semantics … given that ultimately ANY organization’s continued existence hinge on on its ability to exceed revenue inflows in excess of its expenditure /expense outflows. And for the purpose of this particular discussion … IRS Code /Regulation and GAAP (re for-profit or NPOs /501(c)(3)) educational organizations … both type education institutions are being taxpayer subsidized in some form/s) … would not in my view, proffer conclusive evidence (plus or minus) of institutional educational quality and/or outcomes among colleges /universities … merely based on whether administratively structured as a nonprofit or for-profit entity.

Maybe the resident NM attorney, LL.M. in Taxation and EA credentialed Nosborne will offer his insight/s …

 

You mean like farming?

 

Apparently they have not changed sufficiently to warrant a change. At the risk of pulling this thread off-topic I could point out that there's at least one person who disagrees with this system and he just happens to be running for President:

Scott Walker Tool Kit: Fighting Talking Points With Facts

 

The for profit universities wounds were self-inflicted. I enrolled in a program, then quit because I could not in good conscience gave my hard earned money to folks who did not care a sh!t about me.

 

Sorry that you had that experience.

I had the distinct impression that people at the University of Scranton didn't give a crap about me. I don't think it was the university as a whole, mind you, but the financial aid lady wasn't that nice to me. At one point she told me that if I couldn't afford UofS despite the "incredibly generous" package I had been awarded that, perhaps, I should reconsider my future there.

I never had a bad experience at Colorado Technical University. Though, I will admit that I felt pretty ignored at UMT.

But I think there are a few separate issues at play. Does the institution give a crap about you? No, and I don't think that's unique to for-profit schools. Even if a school is non-profit they have a goal of bringing in a lot of money. And schools with "needs blind admissions" have no problem rejecting a student for admissions even if that student's parent just donated millions to the university. Does your department chair? That would be a different story. My department chair at Scranton was great.

Just because something is for-profit doesn't mean that they don't appreciate their customers and just because an organization is non-profit doesn't mean that they care whether you live or die.

 

While not specifically about DL I think this has been one of the stronger arguments in favor of those small liberal arts colleges. They all come with a big price tag and what you're getting in return is a lot of attention from faculty and staff.

 

That will vary from instructor-to-instructor, regardless of the tax status of the institution. There are many instructors at both non-profit and for-profit universities who "do not care a shit about you" (your words). This week, a seminar was held at UC Berkley (a non-profit state university in California) where professors were complaining that instructors' don't "give a shit about students" because class sizes are too big for them to reasonably handle.

 

For-profit universities have done some great things for education. I am not anti for-profit because if the price is right then I may do a program with one. In my case I was paying big bucks from my pocket and I wanted to be treated a certain way. My subsequent experience at a not for profit was much better even thought the operations felt like for-profit. However, the customer service was great. The customer service reps could have been faking it but it felt good to me.

 

Bill Clinton dumps Laureate

Two weeks after Hillary declares for the presidency Bill resigns from Laureate.
Coincidence?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/us/politics/bill-clinton-ends-role-with-laureate-chain-of-for-profit-colleges.html?ref=education&_r=0

Here's Laureate:

Our Network

 

Yes please, I would be very interested in that data. I've been a faculty member at a medium-sized state university and I'm now at a high quality liberal arts college. Applicants from the the institutions you noted are simply never considered so I would be most surprised to find that many are at accredited institutions, other than as adjuncts. Please include state universities as well. And please separate out tenure-track and tenured and well as adjuncts. Thanks so much.