The 100K Club (WGU & SNHU approaching)

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/23/nonprofits-poised-unseat-u-phoenix-largest-online-university

For-profits still taking a hit.

Low unemployment reducing demand all around.

 

"The for-profit brand has been tarnished,” said Trace Urdan, managing director at Tyton Partners,... self-inflicted scandals". We have been saying this for a while, they did it to themselves. All the good things they did were so easily forgotten

 

This will now shake out as it will. The for-profits may have to take a different tack or become nominally non-profit.

 

Now the profit must be more creatively accrued.

 

Sadly a lot of these for-profit schools are only seeking to become non-profit because of the bad reputation associated with the for-profit brand.

 

It is just a matter of time before a distinction is made between the genuine not-for-profits, and the so-called NFP-FPs, the ultimate oxymoron.

 

If there truly are any. The monies that pass through these schools make of them a, if you will, major industry.

 

Argosy, South Univ and all those under that umbrella have now moved to non-profit through the Dream Center.

 

The climate is changing all around. We went, in a very short period of time, from "online degrees are all bullshit" to reputable schools getting into the game. Moreover, we now have at least one example of a reputable school (Purdue) purchasing a for-profit school (Kaplan) and integrating it into its own portfolio.

Non-profit sounds nice to a lot of people. But even the traditional non-profit schools typically spend very large amounts of all that tax-free booty on things like consultants, perks for senior administrators and all sorts of stuff that likely wasn't envisioned when non-profit laws were written. A colleague of mine who works in HR at an Ivy League school nearby (ahem) was recently going off about how the university president lives in a university owned house, a university owned NYC based apartment and is regularly followed by an entourage of plain clothes armed security guards, contracted by an outside firm which, incidentally, often necessitates private air travel.

If UPhoenix ever put up one of their execs in a company owned house paid for with tuition dollars, including many dollars from the USDOE, Dick Durbin would have a shit fit. But it's totally game on as long the school doing it is the sort of place where the critics might want to send their kids.

Likewise, if Kaplan bought Purdue, I think we'd see an outright revolt.

But the old assumptions just don't hold up anymore. At any moment, a non-profit or even a public institution could gobble up Phoenix and all of those maligned students could find themselves with a better brand name on their diplomas to accompany their souvenir socks. The sooner people realize that "non-profit" doesn't mean "nobody is getting rich off of this" the easier a time we'll all have.

 

The sticky in this wicket is the taxpayer monies being glommed by the somebodies.