For-Profit Colleges Disproportionately Responsible for Increase in Debt and Defaults

Here's a study involving low-income, black students in Baltimore. They compared students who went to for-profit trade schools and non-profit schools. 31% of the students at the for-profit trade schools finished their program. While the completion rates were worse at community colleges, the for-profit students had more debt and higher student loan default rates because the for-profit schools were two to four times the cost of the community colleges. So, the researchers came to the conclusion that these students would have been better off attending a non-profit school. I guess that, if you're going to drop out, it's better to drop out with less debt.

What I found interesting is that one of the reasons why students were dropping out was because they found out that they either didn't like the occupation or that they weren't qualified. I worked at a for-profit college that started doing background checks because they found out that some of the criminal justice students couldn't get jobs due to their criminal records. You would think that someone with a criminal record would know that they wouldn't be hired and wouldn't attempt the program in the first place, but these aren't the brightest people. I had a student who wanted to work for Child Protective Services even though she had her children taken away by CPS. There's no way in hell CPS would hire her. I also had a student with warrants for not paying tickets and not showing up to court, and he was a former corrections officer. He should have known that no law enforcement agency would hire him while he had warrants.

https://www.futurity.org/for-profit-colleges-debt-jobs-1249632/

 

Regarding delusional aspirations...

For what it's worth I processed a young man out of the Navy many years ago. He was so happy that he received a a general (under honorable conditions) discharge despite his being separated for drug use. He was thrilled because, in his mind, this meant that his dreams of becoming a DEA agent could still be realized.

I don't have strong opinions either way on for-profit trade schools. I've found many of them to be horribly overpriced. Paying $10k for a pharmacy technician diploma is absurd. We don't license them and CVS regularly advertises hiring people with no prior training into Pharm Tech trainee roles. Though, I recently learned, all of the locksmithing schools in our state that are license qualifying (NYC licenses locksmiths) are for-profit. I have not found, though I admittedly was not looking very hard, a single non-profit locksmith training program in the Empire State.

A few areas, like massage therapy, are pretty heavily dominated by for-profit programs. But traveling across the state for one of the few non-profit ones might be a more costly venture than just paying the premium.

We recruit welders directly from high school provided they can pass the test. It's a one year trade program that can be completed, in New York at least, while in high school. We do not, to my knowledge, have any for-profit welding training programs in the state. For most, the path is to enter a trade school or an apprenticeship post-HS. These programs are often a year or less to get your foot in the door as an apprentice. Some graduate you at proficiency for self-employment. Really depends on the trade we're talking about.

You can get an A.S. (or an A.A.S.) in auto mechanic at a variety of CCs. Though, from my conversations with the guys who fix my car, many of them are able to get hired before graduation and some choose not to stick around for the liberal arts requirements once they land themselves in a shop and either drop out or continue very part-time.

In any case, I never said you can leave high school as a fully skilled tradesperson. I simply said that not going to college is not the same thing as working low skilled/low wage jobs. There are many skilled trades that do not require or do not even offer college level training*.

*With the caveat that I am using "college" in the U.S. sense and not, say, the Canadian sense.

 

Here is an example of a college welding program in Canada. https://www.stlawrencecollege.ca/programs-and-courses/full-time/programs/n_z/welding-and-fabrication-technician/cornwall/

I look through the program guide and trades seem to be very highly regulated with government and professional requirements.

 

In Texas, you must attend a registered apprenticeship training program. Texas regulates almost everything except for phlebotomists and medical assistants. We have several bills up for a vote this session to regulate more occupations.

There is an unpopular bill written by a bald guy to deregulate barbers and cosmetologists. I don't think cosmetology training should be required to do braids or hair weaves because there are no chemicals involved, and there's very little cutting. Plus, cosmetology programs usually don't teach those things. But, the rest of cosmetology should require training, in my opinion.

 

Let me specify. The registered apprenticeship program is for electricians.

 

What programs exist employing workers with a knowledge base regarding education programs, outcomes, graduation rates, etc. that provides information to potential college students in an easy to understand way? Obviously the information is out there to be found but many don’t know what they don’t know and the only “education” they are getting is from the entities trying to sell them something.

 

New York does not regulate most trades. Some municipalities do. NYC, for example, licenses locksmiths and a variety of other trade professions. As a matter of fact, my new neighbor, formerly an insurance agent, recently became an electrician apprentice just by finding a local electrician who was willing to take him on. It has resulted in some pretty affordable electrical work for me so I'm a fan.

Even with apprenticeships, however, you're typically looking at fairly low pay leading up to a fine living wage. Trade schools aside, union apprenticeships can lead to promising careers even if you have to scrape by on $9/hr for the first few years. This compare to taking on a mountain of debt for a degree in pop culture with no direction as to how to put that to work afterward.

I have to imagine that one factor in students from low income families having so much difficulty is that lack of direction. When mom and dad went to college and went on to forge solid careers you have some guidance in how to form life goals. When you don't, my mother was a paralegal until she went back to law school while I was in high school, then you are shown college as the panacea. You go to college and get a degree and good things follow. I'd hardly consider myself coming from a low income background though we were decidedly working class. My parents couldn't offer me much guidance on how to map out a career. To my father, you're a fool if you take a job outside of the civil service system. To my mother, you should just get a job and see what opportunities come up rather than investing in education upfront.

So is it any shock that I went to a local university, majored in something I took a single class in when I was in HS and didn't really have a clear vision of what I hoped to do with it? Now, compound that if your parents were unskilled workers. My dad could offer plenty of advice if I wanted to become a cop. My mother had many thoughts on going to law school while working full time. Neither, however, had the typical college experience nor did they really know what a recent grad "does" with their brand new bachelors degree.

My willingness to wander away from UofS and into the Navy was in large part due to my lack of focus. The Navy was as good an option as any other because I didn't know where I was going to go or really what I wanted. I had no goal to work toward. So walking away mid-degree wasn't a tough decision for me. My girlfriend from freshman year, conversely, had wanted to be a nurse since she was 12. She was devoted to her studies because they led to her earning her BSN and RN which would enable her to achieve her goal. Wild horses from Hell couldn't have dragged her away from that program before she had completed it. I walked away from mine for a lanyard and the promise of getting out of that crappy town.

If you're really not into being an electrician and you're doing it "just because" then you might not succeed. The same is true with almost every degree program. I'd wager that as you go down the economic scale, that goal setting ability diminishes as people are further down Maslow's hierarchy. You're not going to be as focused on where you hope your career will be in 10 years if you need money to pay your electric bill today and your car is on its last leg and you have no idea how you can get it fixed. Or, worse, you have no car and public transportation eats up an appreciable chunk of your day.

 

It is always a little gratifying to me when someone uses welding as an example of a potentially lucrative trade as it is the basis of my own career. I do very little actual welding anymore. Sometimes I'll do a demo for someone who is trying to become certified in a specific technique. In any case, you can make some money at this job, especially if you pile up some certs and some people follow the contracts, working in Bath ME for a while then moving to San Diego or wherever the next big ship is being built. Some people specialize in structural members that go to make up big buildings, some specialize in aircraft or power generation systems. Stainless steel is my favorite and every once in a while someone will ask me to do a delicate little job just so they don't have to find/pay someone else to do it. Here's a link to the welding program at Wentworth. It's not DL in any way. It's a part of the larger Manufacturing program at the school. By the way, one of my instructors was a General Dynamics welding supervisor that did not have any college degree at all. But he could weld anything to anything - one of those blue-collar engineers who would routinely outshine all the white-collar boys when it came to solving practical manufacturing problems.

https://wit.edu/academics/cpce/programs/workforce-training-and-development/workforce-training-and-development-welding

 

update

https://theweek.com/speedreads/842946/forprofit-universities-are-increasingly-filled-by-students-poverty

 

I guess I'm unsure as to why people would be surprised by this?

The children of rich parents are less likely to be enticed by a for-profit school, particularly one that is trade focused. Your beauty schools, massage schools etc are all filled with students trying to jump up a rung or two on the economic ladder. If your family has money, legacy admissions prioritization and you have access to tutors and financial backing as you pursue your education, you're probably going to pursue the traditional educational route. You're going to want the best or, at a minimum, the best you can afford.

If you're broke and trying to pull yourself up by the boot straps as critics of a living wage minimum wage say you should, then associate programs and career focused programs are going to appear mighty tempting. If you make $11/hr, the idea of going to school and enduring the suck for 6 months to a year and hopefully coming out with a career that pays $20/hr seems worthwhile. And it can be. Though the inflated prices of these programs often suck up any increased earnings since now you have debt to pay off.

I have no doubt that the reason my degrees being from for-profit schools (up until fairly recently) hasn't affected me is that I come from a middle class background. My career would have taken a similar trajectory whether my degrees were from CTU or Scranton or even Cornell. While we weren't rich, the reality was that if push came to shove when I got out of the Navy, I could have moved back in with either of my parents and they could have floated me while I went back to school. That's a luxury that those in poverty really don't have. That's also a luxury that drives up the likelihood that I will succeed no matter where I study.

So you have programs that appeal mainly to the poor. And the poor lack any meaningful support structure to take advantage of more reputable programs. That's ignoring the obvious marketing push by many for-profits toward those students in poverty. Then we're surprised that the programs are filled with students in poverty? We're surprised that they cannot handle the debt?

My criticism of these articles is simply that the major crime of the for-profits here is that they made it accessible to the poor in the first place. Someone with a GED working at Wal Mart is not likely to walk into Babson and decide to try their hand at a degree in the humanities. It would likely never occur to them to attempt that. But when late night ads assure them that they can make more money as a pharmacy technician, it's a temptation. It feels like a viable option. That, we've decided, is reprehensible. It's perfectly fine, however, for inconsequential non-profit schools to saddle the kid of a working class family with six figure debt for a degree in sociology.

It's the same scam just with different target audiences. We also find the well dressed admissions person selling the snake oil to be more palatable than the late night infomercial.

 

Say what you will about infomercials, those towels are amazing.

 

here is a different sham

 

There are a lot of private colleges that have done a pretty fair job at providing education, 7 out of 8 Ivies are private, Stanford, Duke, Chicago, MIT, are private, USC is private. And whether it's the same sort of free market as toothpaste or cheeseburgers or UoP is debatable, but it is still the free market.

 

I don't think that's the case. But I do think it's better for those poor kids to attend the open-admissions local community college for a couple years at $100 a credit hour, then head over to State U for $250 a credit hour to finish up their bachelor's or pursue grad work, rather than going to For Profit U for $400 a credit hour. I cannot believe what people are paying for for-profit educations. Harvard External is roughly the same tuition as UoP. It's an outrage.

 

Reminds me of my gone-but-not-forgotten father. Dropped out of high school at 16 to apprentice as a machinist. Worked his way up through the ranks over the years to become a master machinist, a tool and die maker. He was the machinist equivalent of your instructor at General Dynamics. At the peak of his career, he was working for a government contractor machining
gimbals for the space program back during the glory days of the 1960s. Talk about precision--few thousands off, and maybe the spaceship spins out of control and dead astronauts and national scandal! And all from a dropout from a small dirty railroad hub town in the lower Midwest. After that all died out, he went to work for another government contractor running the day-to-day operations of an Army base and they hired him in the engineering division as an actual engineer, the job title was "General Engineer"--without a high school diploma. He'd educated himself in higher math, design, metallurgy, all kinds of things. And he was more competent than a number of the engineers with university degrees.

 

If seven out of eight Ivies are private, which one is public?

 

All 8 are private.

 

That's what I thought but FTFaculty says that seven out of eight are private.

 

Might be thinking about how Cornell University is a private university with some programs in a unique contractual partnership with State of New York.