Should for-profit schools have more rigorous entry requirements?

The parallels between the home mortgage mess and the student loan mess are striking. In both cases:

(1) People were strongly encouraged to borrow large amounts (commonly six figures) for aspirational purposes, e.g. a fancy new house or an impressive degree.

(2) This encouragement extended to poorly qualified borrowers, e.g. those with low incomes relative to housing costs, or poor academic qualifications for college-level study. It was "open admissions" in both cases.

(3) People knew they were taking out a lot of debt, but assumed that market conditions would support it, e.g. home prices would continue to go up, or the job market would continue to place increasing value on degrees.

(4) But eventually market conditions turned unfavorable. Home prices slumped. So did the job market.

(5) There were grace periods before the full impact of the loans was felt, e.g. with adjustable rate mortgages or deferral periods for student loans.

(6) But sooner or later, the loans came due, and people were shocked to realize that they were "underwater". Many people now owe more on their houses than the houses themselves are worth. In the same way, many people probably owe more on their degrees than the degrees themselves are worth, at least as measured in terms of increased salary and career opportunities.

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It is now much harder to get a home loan that it was five years ago; lenders will only lend money if the home price is reasonable and/or the lender has a good credit history. The "open enrollment" days are over.

And the same thing is likely to happen with student loans in the future: lenders will only lend money if the tuition is reasonable and/or the degree program has good potential earning power. This change would significantly alter the "open admissions" situation at many for-profit schools. The standards for enrolling in degree programs would, in effect, go up -- not because of higher admissions standards by the schools, but because of higher borrowing standards by the lenders. The for-profits will not accept students who have no means to pay tuition.

 

It is up to the student to decide if they can or cannot make it. A loan is one thing, admissions is another. I wouldn't dare try to tell somebody they could not do something based off a past record, especially something highly variable and inaccurate as an indicator like high school. Who's to say somebody can't get better? I like having open admissions schools.

 

I understand and agree with you. However, what of the community college or state university student who cannot completed his or her studies? If you consider not just the federal student aid (i.e. pell grants and student loans), but also add the state tax allotment and the local tax allotment recevied by public colleges and universities, then the student at your local community college is receiving a larger share of taxpayer funds than the student at the for-profit college, who can only receive federal student aid, but not state and local taxpayer subsidies.

 

The proposed 2011 California state budget for allocates $10,091,000 to community colleges - that works out to be $273 per CA resident (not counting any local taxes). Source AB1609.

Incidentally the budget recommends raising tuition to $40 per semester unit from the current $26.

 

This is precisely why it is so silly to speak of for-profit schools as if they were all alike. When Compton College lost its regional accreditation and had to be absorbed by another school, were the headlines filled with call for investigating (and shutting down) all public community colleges? Of course not. But if Phoenix or American Intercontinental have unethical admissions practice, you can bet that the Chronicle of Higher Education and Congress will be filled with folks villifying all proprietary schools, no matter how different from Phoenix and AIU they are. Well, at least those of us with experience in distance learning know what lack of knowledge and a little hysteria can do

By the way, I do not know about ProfTim's institution, but mine is regionally accredited by SACS (the first for-profit to be so accredited), up through the doctoral level.

Well, my institution does not pretend to be Harvard (nor does it pretend to have a 30 billion dollar endowment). My position focuses primarily on providing instructional and student services to our admitted online students and training and support for our online faculty. SACS has provided some pretty specific guidelines as to how distance learning programs should be run and I am assuring that our online campus follows all of them. I am fortunate in that I do not have to focus upon marketing and recruitment of students, yet I do perform a "check and balance" role in that I admit or reject the applications once they come from admissions. I must be aware of both profit and quality. My institution was not built on sacrificing one to achieve the other.

 

A Matter of Funding

I like open admissions as well, but funding is a real issue. If someone who barely completed high school due to laziness, partying excessively, or simply was not intelligent enough to do so wants to go to college, then by all means go for it. Everyone needs a chance to get ahead, and a school with open admissions is one of the places they may get that help. But be able to pay your way. There is an excessive amount of government loans divvied out to anyone with a pulse that it is akin to the home loan scandal.

 

You have a point, but at the same time:

The University of Phoenix has a physical presence in hundreds of locations nationwide, current enrollment of a half million students, and a massive advertising budget (which includes the naming rights to an NFL stadium). Whether you like it or not, UoP is by far the largest and best-known for-profit university in the country, and probably the world.

So UoP is the school that people are most likely to associate with "for-profit education" -- just as they associate McDonald's with "fast food" or Google with "search engine". The category is, to a large extent, defined by the biggest and most visible players -- who may or may not be the ideal exemplars.

Compton College, on the other hand, is just one among 1,000+ local community colleges nationwide. No one outside the LA area had ever heard of it when it lost its accreditation, and it has since dropped back into obscurity. No one thinks that it is particularly a representative or important player as far as community colleges go, as in fact it is not.

 

I once enrolled in a butt-in-seat Bachelor of Liberal Studies program at the University of Wisconsin. During a wine and cheese mixer with the faculty, one of the professors asked me why I was pursuing a degree and I mentioned I had always want to finish my studies, advance in my career, etc. He then said "Most of the students in this room will never finish the program," after which he proceeded to cackle hysterically. The school was definitely using students to make money even though they knew most students wouldn't finish, and it wasn't a DL program.

The prof was right; I didn't finish that particular program. I was pulling a 3.8 average, but I took another job and had to move, and therefore could not complete my studies with UW.

By the way, few of the credits I earned there have transferred to any other school I have enrolled in since.

 

As long as student loans are:

1. impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, and
2. subsidized by the federal government,

then lenders will continue to throw money at students, because they have virtually no downside to doing so. The student can't walk away from the loan, and if they do, then the feds pick up the tab. The lender can't lose. Instead of making college more accessible, federally subsidized student loans are distorting the market and actually driving prices up, forcing lower income students to choose between a lifetime of debt repayment or foregoing an education. I was lucky enough to be able to fund my undergraduate studies out of pocket, but if current trends continue, I don't see any way that my son will be able to do so.

 

And now, for a large part of the loan equation, the federal government IS the bank...

So far we've been lucky. My daughter received a very generous scholarship offer, but I see more CLEP/DSST, Big 3 and community college for my kids future while homeschooling...

 

I remember my first adjunct teaching job. I don't want to mention the name of the school, but they are owned by EDC.

I had students in my class that were functionally illiterate, yet there was tremendous pressure to pass these students. One of the metrics that determined if you retained was your retention rate. While no one in administration TOLD me to pass students, the implications were there, especially about "alternative assessments", make-up work, extending deadlines, being "understanding", etc.

That being said, there were students at this school whom I believed could succeed at any school.

Shawn

 

Oh, Ian, my friend, the 10 Mil allotment for the Board of Governors of the California Community College's Chancellor's Office in Sacramento is just the tip of a very tall iceberg. The largest single source of state funds is the 3 billion dollar "Proposition 98 funding," which provides for general operating and salary, among other things. From the same AB1609, comes the following state allotments:

10,091,000-for Support of Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges (the one you mentioned)

3,208,862,000-- Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges (Proposition 98)
1,099,645,000—Student Aid Commission,
68,866,000-to allow selected community colleges to make required lease-purchase payments
31,834,000-College Capital Outlay Bond Fund
10,560,000—For support of Student Aid Commission
1,899,000-Facilities Planning
570,000-for local district financial oversight and evaluation
302,000-Community College Fund for Instructional Improvement
208,000-Mental Health Services
58,000-Math and Science Teacher Initiative
6,000-Math and Science Teacher Initiative
12,000-Economic Development, payable from the California Business Resources and Assistance Innovation Network Fund
15,000-Economic Development

This totals $4,432,928,000.00 of California State funds earmarked just for community colleges. This is in addition to, local property taxes and other local tax funding, Title III and other federal grants (which, in California, total hundreds of millions of dollars), pell grants and student loans. This also does not include similar sized allotments for the California State University system and the Unviersity of California System.

How much of these types of state allotments go to private proprietary (for-profit) schools? $0 Is this larger than the amount of federal student loan funding going to students at for-profit schools in California? Exponentially so.

Now, am I saying to give the for-profit schools a "pass" and to not take them to task when they break the rules? Of course not. However, when you read another article about how much taxpayer funding is going into proprietary education, please be aware that you are not being told the entire story.

 

Yes, they can take advantage of all of these opportunities. However there are many universities that are homeschool friendly and will allow direct transfer. Another common route for homeschooled students is to take 10 classes (30 semester units) at the local community college and then transfer to their desired university as a college transfer student. After 30 units of college, many universities will ignore the high school transcript (or ignore the fact that one might not exist), since it is universally recognized that success in college is a far better predictor of success in college, than is success in high school (go figure ).

 

I did not know this. My parents didn't document my brother's home schooling in a compliant manner. I'm going to tell my parents to talk with somebody at the 4 state school (UCCS) and see what they have to say.

 

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This is a delete

 

You are correct - I misread the budget as being in billions then I compounded my error by writing in millions.

Here is a comparison of the governors, assembly and senate budgets:
http://www.ccleague.org/files/public/BudgChrt061510.pdf
Over $6.5 billion or around $175 per resident. I do not know if these numbers account for student paid tuition and fees. And as you mention there are probably collateral costs.

 

The other thing also is if your brother scores high enough on the Accuplacer or Compass assessments, no high school information of any type is needed for Federal Financial Aid purposes:

COMPASS Approved as an ATB (Ability-to-Benefit) Test by the US DOE

Massasoit - Ability to Benefit Policy

Shawn

 

Your figures are correct, taking into account California's total population. Of course, if we count only taxpayers, then the figure is quite a bit higher. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, 13,657,632 tax returns were filed from California last year, so the cost per taxpayer for community college state funding would be about $475. These numbers do not account for student paid tuition or fees and there are definitely collaterial costs.

Since there are just under 1.8 million students in the California Community College system, this equates to a state allotment of $3,635 per student, which is the lowest per-student allotment in California public education (K-12 students, Cal State Students and U of California students receive much higher per-student funding than community college students).

 

One, for a simple reason. Since many employers are demanding a bachelors degree then people need to get one even if normally they would not be in college.

What choice are you giving marginal students not get a degree and not even get any chance at a job?

People like you folks set the bar so high you created this problem if most people didn't NEED a four year degree but could get along with a High School Diploma, a Two Year or specialized education at a Trade School. Then these schools would not be popular I would think.

Why are you being elitist? According to most educators I've read on this topic all students should go to college and get a degree.