ITT Tech is closing

The next time I see Harvard University giving away clothing, food, and school supplies in Harvard Square, I might take that seriously.

C'mon, you can do better than one of the oldest cop-outs ever; "You just don't understand the issues as I do".

Lame.

 

I have a friend who works for AAA, their Road Side Assistance business is non for profit.
It generates a database of millions of customers. Now their insurance, travel, Car sales and number of additional lines of business are all for profit and take advantage of really nice base of existing client of the non for profit Road Side Assistance business.
Among Universities there are some schemes as well.
They are all making money and pay salaries, accept donations and grants etc.

 

This ITT shutdown is looking like it will benefit the students way more than other shutdowns in the past.

 

As I said, if the numbers make sense for a person, then go for it. I left CTU with very little debt. Significantly less debt than I had accumulated at the University of Scranton. This is because I used military TA, the GI Bill and self-funded quite a bit. Was it still expensive? Sure.

But my soon-to-be MBA from U of S is also expensive. At $50k the AACSB is less of a selling point and more of an expectation. For the same price I could have gone with Penn State. For a fraction of the price I could go with UMass Dartmouth. AACSB and, arguably, broader name recognition than the University of Scranton. My reasons for choosing Scranton were mainly nostalgic. But I had the freedom to make that choice because my employer was picking up the tab. So price isn't the only thing that matters. How that price is being paid can matter quite a bit.

If CTU offered a full ride scholarship (they do as part of their Wounded Warrier Scholarship program) is that really worse than paying full price at WGU? I don't think so.

OK, fine, so let's look at privately owned physician offices in Canada. These are not not-for-profit ventures.

If you think that the bulk of the poor's dental needs are being serviced by non-profits then you are mistaken. The bulk of them are being treated at regular for-profit dental offices that accept Medicaid. Non-profit dental charities typically rely on volunteer dentists and focus on rural areas where there is no local dentist, period.

Even those that serve broader audiences serve a fraction of the individuals assisted by regular, for-profit dentists who line their pockets with Medicaid money.

As with universities, some are good and provide quality service and employ proper billing practices. Others bilk the government, provide unnecessary and/or low quality services.

Bruce is the one who dropped it so I assume it's his.

The problem with this is that there is more to a charity being a scam than whether the recipients of the free stuff are happy with the free stuff they received. That charity might absolutely be a scam if they are soliciting donations from everyone else and spending only $1 of every $10 on giving clothing, food and school supplies to families like yours. If the other $9 goes to funding a seven figure salary for the CEO and a private jet then yes, the charity should indeed be criticized even if you benefited from their services. I know veterans who benefited from the Wounded Warrior Project's programs. That's great. But the donors still have a right to criticize the organization when they find out that those donated funds are supporting soda habits.

And maybe you couldn't just walk into Target and obtained all of that stuff for free. But what if Target gave all of that stuff to the charity in question? My local Wegmans gives away a significant amount of food every year in addition to the gobs of food donations they solicit on behalf of local food charities. I can assure you that their "fill the bus" campaign convinces me to donate significantly more food than the local food bank's efforts alone.

There are plenty of non-profits out there today that, through teams of lawyers and accountants, remain compliant with 501(c)3 despite providing private sector level salaries to their executives. And there are for-profit companies out there that do good in their community. Social Entrepreneurship is a thing. They have Masters programs in it and everything these days.

But the lines get pretty fuzzy pretty quickly and the media likes to skew them pretty hard. If I buy fabric from artisans in Africa and sell trendy backpacks it seems like a 50/50 shot as to whether I'll be labeled as a social entrepreneur who is infusing needed cash into the African economy or if I'll be reviled as exploiting third world labor for my own gain.

 

Excellent observations.

"For-profits" and "non-profits" have financial structural differences, oftentimes dealing with tax write-offs and/or receiving tax dollars for institutional support. The differences (for both) can include:
- Using tax dollars to support state universities or community colleges.
- Exempting some institutions from paying taxes (that's huge).
- Using tax dollars for Title IV student loans

In both for-profits and non-profits, money is acquired, salaries are paid, and financial enrichment happens. However, the term "non-profit" seems to engender the false-noble-notion that there is no financial abuse or wealth enrichment. But wherever there is money, there will be personalized financial enrichment, regardless of the for-profit or non-profit status. Both systems are benefiting people.

 

Banks are for profit and so are check cashing businesses. Different niches.

 

I agree. I saw UMT offering to waive evaluation and application fees. My first thought was that I generally don't recommend NA undergrad degrees. But if you were already at ITT Tech you're probably only going to do better by getting a different name, even if it is only UMT, on your resume.

But if you started out with ITT Tech and ended with Bellevue I'd say you're probably much better off. Though I do wonder, if ITT was as tragic as the news reports indicate, if any ITT folks will find Bellevue's expectations to be too far of a stretch.

 

I don't even know where to begin with all of these specific, hypothetical situations. The military makes up a small percentage of college, and the military is not going to enlist millions of people who just want to go to college. I know you like to use University of Scranton as a yardstick for everything, but none of this has anything to do with what I said. I said that if my children were to go to a lower tier school, I would want them to choose one that is cheap.

Going back to what I said earlier, the bulk do not receive dental services at all. The Medicaid expansion is very recent and not all states participate in it. If a state did not participate in the Medicaid expansion, then very few adults in that state will qualify.

Yes, there are corrupt for-profits, but that is irrelevant to the point made. Bruce said that the concept of "non-profit" is a scam.

 

Sorry to sound rude, but this is so nonsensical, it's making my head hurt. Harvard is a higher education institution. It does give away a lot of free education. Most of their students qualify for substantial financial aid packages and walk away with very little debt. Harvard is not in the business of food, clothing, and school supplies. You don't go to a food bank and ask for a free college education. Non-profits specialize.

It's not a cop-out; it's the truth. It's not "as I do;" it's how it's understood by the majority of the business world. The funny thing is that YOU implied that I did not understand as you do.

 

For-profit colleges spell trouble for politicians who backed them - POLITICO
Closer to the truth, "For years, politicians from both parties have extolled the virtues of for-profit colleges, often after the education companies poured millions into campaign coffers, paid them to speak or put them on the payroll."

 

I don't use UofS as a yardstick for everything. I use it as an example because it is the school I have direct experience with. I find it odd that you fill this thread with anecdotes from your personal life but my using a school I presently attend as an example of costs is using it as a "yardstick for everything." There is not a conversation on for-profit that comes up where you don't specifically cite your displeasure with CTU and UofP. So why are you using your experience with CTU and the University of Phoenix as a yardstick for everything?

I also suggest you re-read what I wrote. I never said everyone should join the military and get it paid for. I said that how you pay for something matters just as much as how much it actually costs. Whether you pay for it through the military, student loans, employer TA, scholarships or cash. The total cost only matters to a certain extent. A free ride at an expensive school is cheaper than paying full price at a cheap school. If your employer offers you a free degree program at Strayer then the cost to you is significantly less than coming out of pocket to attend a school 1/3 the price.

Scranton was my example because it is expensive. That's about it. I suspect you're simply getting yourself worked up to the point where you aren't actually reading or attempting to comprehend what is being written. Maybe have some chamomile tea and come back to this topic with a fresh set of eyes.

There is a Medicaid dental practice in New York that has been around since the early 1990s. Medicaid is their specialty. They have locations all around. And some people go there just because they like the dentists even though they aren't on Medicaid (I believe those individuals have to pay cash as I don't think they accept private insurance). All of this deviates pretty far from my original point, however, that dentists operate for-profit practices. They do so in the U.S. They do so in Canada. They do so in Australia. They do so in virtually every quarter of the world. They do so in countries where dental care is covered by the government. They do so in countries where it is not. There is no first world industrialized nation where any appreciable number of the nation's dentists are employed by either the government or a public charity.

So, if for-profit is evil and cannot be trusted because they put profits ahead of quality then go find yourself a non-profit dentist. Not the poor kids of rural Arkansas. Not any other red herring you throw out there. You. Go take yourself to a charity dentist rather than put your teeth in the hands of an evil profiteer.

I don't think that the concept of a non-profit is a scam. But I think that people infer things from an organization being a non-profit which are simply not reasonable to infer from that fact alone. Look at the comments section on any news article about the Wounded Warrior scandal. You see people arguing that non-profits shouldn't have paid staff and should only employ volunteers. Is that reasonable? Should Harvard not be able to pay people to maintain student records or empty trash bins? Of course not. Some people think that non-profit means that the organization is poor, humble and pure in a sort of St. Francis way. They still need money to keep the lights on in addition to providing programming. And they need staff to do both of those things.

My wife is an executive director of a non-profit. She took the job because she made more doing this than as a counselor in private practice. Some of her friends from grad school were surprised. Some of them thought that leading a non-profit was this personal sacrifice where educated people worked for virtually no money for the greater good.

People mistake volunteer roles at organizations for the paid staff, and vice versa, who enable those volunteers to actually do their thing. And that creates this false perception that it is free from the taint of money. That isn't true.

But that's the perception that people have.

Here, quick anecdote along those lines.

I send my kids to a for-profit daycare. I didn't seek out a for-profit daycare. I sought out a good daycare and this one just happens to not be structured as a non-profit. Some of the fellow parents actually pulled their kids out and plopped them into a fairly large non-profit daycare because they didn't want anyone putting "profit before children." Ridiculous.

Any at-home daycare is for-profit. Any freelance babysitter is engaging in a for-profit venture. Being for-profit, as I've said, is not intrinsically wrong. Nor is being a non-profit a government guarantee that an entity is ethical or effective. But some people feel that it is. These people feel that being a non-profit puts "profit before x" even though they'll pump hundreds of dollars a month into Starbucks. If all for-profits were truly putting profit above literally everything else then why isn't Starbucks using (even more) inferior beans? Why not recycle dishwater into coffees? There are for-profits that do things like that. But to hold that all for-profits behave unethically because they put profits first is ridiculous. To hold that non-profits are good because they don't is a very serious misconception.

So no, I don't think that every non-profit is a scam. But I think, not terribly unlike accreditation in the U.S., what it means to be a non-profit isn't clear to the majority of people and they make false assumptions which are beneficial to non-profits, overall.

 

There's an ad from APUS on their main page as well. Chomping at the bit! lol

 

I think this closure was the best thing for the students. They went from their credits 'Unlikely to Transfer" . . . to . . . .No Problem, come over to our RA School.

Good for them.


- Michael

 

I don't think those credits are magically transferable. The schools saying "come on over" that we've spoken about are not really a surprise here. But an ITT tech grad trying to transfer those credits into a local CC likely still would have issues.

If schools like SNHU were smart (and wildly unethical) they would target students at embattled for-profit schools BEFORE the hammer drops.

When Target closed their pharmacies (to immediately replace them with CVS pharmacies) every oharmacy in town was advertising to try to gobble up Target pharmacy customers.

It might look charitable and kind. But even a non-profit or state school is thinking about things like cost of acquisition in their marketing budgets. displaced ITT students are a cheap grab even with full credit transfer.

 

I didn't bring up CTU and UoP; you brought up CTU. I simply said that I would not mind sending my children to any of the schools I attended except for the two for-profits. It was simply demonstrating that I would not be opposed to my children attending schools that I support instead of being hypocritical. CTU and WIU aren't even the worst of the for-profits. My opinion of the for-profit college industry is based on much more than just those two schools. Unlike you, I don't spend pages and pages talking about those schools. You've written a book on University of Scranton. The simple fact is that, even though private non-profits have the highest tuition rates on average, they leave their students with the lowest amount of debt, on average.

That's fine for those individuals who have a lot of non-loan aid, but most for-profit college students are not receiving a lot of non-loan aid. If it weren't for federal loans, the expensive for-profits would not be able to survive.

I admit that when I see one of your long, irrelevant posts on University of Scranton, I start scanning. Going back to read your posts, I hold the same opinion.

Who said that all for-profits are evil? I don't think one person in this thread either said or implied that all for-profit organizations are evil. There is a general problem with the for-profit, higher education industry just like there is a general problem with payday loan companies. This is the equivalent of someone saying she doesn't like cats and someone else responding with not all pets are evil.

All of this should be directed at Bruce, not me.

 

Then why did you use the analogy?

Really? Tell that to my sister-in-law who graduated from Harvard with a mountain of student debt, one of my professors who did the same, and my niece, who will in 2020.

Yes, they specialize in making money. Their endowment rivals the GNP of many countries, but they're "non-profit", right? What functional difference does it make if a college's profit (and that's what excess money is) goes to an endowment, or to shareholders?

Try reading for comprehension.

 

I think it would be incredibly unethical if a school, and I'm just using SNHU as an example because it is non-profit yet an aggressive marketer, began targeting students of for-profit schools by implying that they should "get out while they still can" and flee to that particular non-profit school.

It's fine to pick up the pieces when a school fails
But to vigorously attack another school while it is still operating normally? I don't think that's a trend in higher Ed marketing we want to see begin.

 

It was a response to you saying that the concept of non-profit is a scam. It wasn't a comparison between a charity that hands out clothing and schools. It was a comparison between a charity that hands out clothing and a for-profit business that sells clothing.

I'm sure you are smart enough to know what the terms average and outlier mean.

http://www.collegefactual.com/colleges/harvard-university/paying-for-college/student-loan-debt/

If you knew anything about their endowment, you would know that the problem is that they don't spend it. Most of it just sits there. Endowments are donations; they are not profits from offering a service or product. Harvard isn't "making" all of that money; they accept it.

You should take your own advice. I've always tested quite high in reading comprehension, so I'm confident that I'm fine in that department.