For-profit college risk: Huge debt, questionable degree

NA/RA and Debt

Regardless of what a school tells you, it would be irresponsible to start degree program without researching what the degree will get you. Schools post their accreditation information but they don't tell you what it means. Buyer beware, do your homework. Also, it is important to understand how much money you'll pay and how much you'll make. 70,000 for fashion design is crazy. It would be better to get a degree with more utility. I make 50,000 working part time teaching English because of my MA in English. I live in a very uneducated section of California and teach mainly in person. This money is more than enough to pay off my loans and fund my EdD in Higher Ed Admin that I hope to start next year. There are also students from traditional schools that can't find jobs and pay their loans. Because the school is traditional it doesn't come under fire from the public. However, some people always have trouble finding jobs, regardless of the diplomas on the wall. Some people are unreliable and come off as a poor employee, and a degree doesn't change that.

 

This is part of the reason I picked AMU for my history degree. It's an RA degree but won't put me into any debt. I'm able to finish my whole degree for around $10K. I figure I should be able to make at least $10K back at some point in my life from it, and if not, it's OK as I mainly did it for personal growth. I'd never have done it if I had to take loans out or pay $40K for a history degree, especially from a for-profit.

 

Hey, great job! How do you like AJU?

Technically, I'm currently homeless. It's a long story, but it basically involves faulty plumbing in the house in which I was living. I've been living in hotels ever since, going on four months now. I'm close to finding another place to live, but it has been a looooonnnnggg summer!

 

Given that the Obama administration appears to have taken a decided stance against for-profit industries in general and is also heavily staffed with academics from traditional non-profit universities (including the President himself), the Administration's preoccupation against for-profit education is not only unsurprising, it was inevitable. Unfortunately for the proprietary (for-profit) sector, the GAO's hidden shoppers caught and recorded four institutions committing despicable acts of fraud and have accused a dozen others of misleading or questionable practices. So the 3,000 for-profit school, colleges and universities are all guilty by association (even those that are family-owned, not part of larger publicly-traded corporations, have no stockholders, are not listed on Wall Street, and who do not engage in deceptive recruiting tactics).

I am the first to agree that the "bad actors" should be punished for their actions, but the Administration and Congress's moves to regulate all for-profits with a sledgehammer has a familiar ring to it. Remember the "50% rule"? It was that brilliant piece of regulation by Congress that denied federal financial aid to students and institutions that offered more than 50% of instruction via distance learning. It was also designed to squelch the activities of the "bad players," but ended up hurting the educational opportunities for tens of thousands of students seeking legitimate distance learning. If that piece of work had not been repealed, then many of the DL degrees earned by those on Degreeinfo would not have happened. The current rush to regulation is, as Yogi Berra put it, "deja vu all over again."

With the current climate of "for-profit business=bad and greedy," one of the many things that does not get reported (and I wonder why) is that for-profit colleges and universities pay income taxes--lots of taxes. If fact, they paid over $2,000,000,000.00 (yes 2 billion) in taxes last year. What was the combined total of income tax paid by all non-profit colleges & universities combined? Zero.

Finally, I'd like to address the issue of "questionable degrees" (or as printed in other articles "worthless degrees" or "substandard degrees"). While there have been some surveys comparing the acceptance of degrees earned via DL to "traditional" degrees in a few different sectors, there have been no studies comparing student learning outcomes and achievement between degree holders from for-profit vs. non-profit institutions. So when someone mentions that a degree from a for-profit institution is "(pick your negative adjective)," on what is this evaluation based? Is a degree from a for-profit regionally accredited doctoral granting university just as questionable as one from a nationally accredited for-profit technical school or a state-approved cosmetology school?

Several of my faculty and administrative colleagues at the public community colleges and universities for which I have worked (21 of my 23 year career was in the non-profit higher education sector) completed degrees via DL at Capella and Walden (and at non-profit DL programs at Nova Southeastern, Union and others). As a result of these "questionable" degrees, they received promotion and tenure.

Sorry for the somewhat negative tone of this post. I am climbing down from the soapbox. Thus endeth my rant for tonight...now back to regular programming

 

I'm not going to push this into the realm of politics, but a large portion of his staff and the President have served as professor at B&M's. They are not going to be easy on anything different as they have shown.

As I worked in a Narco Unit I know you stop tons of people before you get the big fish. I bet they went to many many different schools before they got what they wanted. I would be willing to bet they had to go to many different enrollment advisors before they found a dirty one that would do anything to get them signed up. If they could of don't you think they would have had ten people from U of P on tape?

 

Sorry about going off topic, but I usually don't see this type of attitude from UofM grads towards EMU (if you live in Michigan that statement will make sense), or EMU grads themselves, much less from someone with a BA from who knows where, pursuing an advanced degree from Ashford (and I wouldn't even have ever brought that up, but slamming my school made me mad).

My mother graduated from EMU and received a very vigorous eduction, and she has had a fantastic career in Nursing since. She attended Eastern back in the days you are referring to them being a joke. I recently graduated Cum Laude from EMU and I know for a fact I could walk right into UofM and be accepted into a Masters program there. As far as my job prospects, its pretty early to tell, but I had just interviewed for a permanent employment position at UofM where I was 1 of 7 interviewed for a position that had 150 applicants. Yes, this position REQUIRED a BS degree. Actually, there is a very high proportion of EMU grads employed by UofM which in SouthEastern MI (or the entire country), is considered a very good place to work. Many PHDs I know personally had graduated from EMU at some point and have nothing but praise the school. Maybe I should also remind you that EMU was one of the only Universities in the country (if not the only University in the US) that did not increase its tuition this year, much less room and board. Furthermore, one in four teachers in MI alone received their education from EMU (I'll bet you'll use this as the reason for the failures of the education system in this country). Not to mention, EMU is one of the most non-traditional student friendly Universities around (I was a non-traditional student and found EMU more non trad student friendly than the MI community college I graduated from with 4 associate degrees). Here's some other useful FACTS about EMU, to correct some of your fallacies.

 

Hey so this is a kind of zombie thread --- dead but not completely dead --- so I thought I'd tack on this story from the Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/03/education/03cncwarren.html?_r=1&ref=education

 

Thank you, Kizmet. This is one of the better-crafted articles on the subject that I have read and was interesting to me as a former Illinois citizen who was a constituent of Senator Durbin (and then-Senator Obama).

Since, according to the U.S. Social Security Administration, the average wage index in 1969 was 5,893.76 and in 2008 was 41,334.97 (just over 7 times higher), I wonder what Senator Durbin would say about his $8,900 debt in 1969 being equivalent to one of well over $62,000 in 2008 (and more today). Would that put some of the higher debt figures of today's graduates into perspective? Perhaps not.

The author was right that Senator Durbin has bigger concerns about public education than about private for-profit education in Illinois. The figure that 90% of Chicago Public School graduates attending community colleges were not ready for college-level math and English only tells half the story...literally. When I was working for a state university in Chicago (in which the vast majority of CPS high school graduates came to us needing remediation), a story broke in the Chicago Tribune that only 1/2 of CPS graduates were even going on to college--so those who were unable to handle college-level work were, most likely from the upper half of graduates. Oh, and who was it that was in charge of CPS? Our current U.S. Education Secretary, Arne Duncan.

Yes, I would agree with the author that the Senator's biggest education problems at the present time are not the University of Phoenix, DeVry, Kaplan, etc.

 

No one "slammed your school". I couldn't care less that you think TESC is a joke. It served its purpose, and you can slam AU all you want too. I'm confident in the education I'm receiving from them and what I can and will do with it. If you are from around here, you should understand perfectly well that EMU was NOT (no matter how you wish otherwise) considered a "good school" until maybe 10-ish years ago. Now? Yes, it is. It's better than just about any other school in MI, UM-AA withstanding. I clearly stated that in my post. There was no snobbery on my part, just re-stating commonly held beliefs in MI. Now I DID generalize for sake of brevity. If you wanted me to revise it and say "EMU was not considered a good school until about 10-ish years ago, unless it was in the fields of education or nursing", then ok I can change that. My original opinions still hold true.

Wishing does not make something so. I never went to a top notch undergrad and my MBA will not come from a top tier school, even if I cross my fingers and wish it did. Pointing that out only hurts your arguments, not mine.