
Source: For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
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Source: For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
For-profit colleges are following a corporate model that puts profits above students, according to the findings of a U.S. Senate report published Sunday.
The report, "For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success," is the result of a two-year investigation led by Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin and looks at institutions including Apollo Group, Inc., which operates University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college in the U.S., Kaplan, Inc. and Devry, Inc..
The report states that "by 2009, at least 76 percent of students attending for-profit colleges were enrolled in a college owned by either a company traded on a major stock exchange or a college owned by a private equity firm." The for-profit colleges' financial success is therefore watched by shareholders, in a situation that incentivizes profits, not student academic performance.
"The investigation found that while certainly not all for-profit colleges are run by investors looking to make a quick return on investment, too many of them are. It also found that even those for-profit colleges that are committed to the educational mission, that invest in their students and in robust support services, and that offer programs in high demand fields, still engage in troubling practices in order to achieve the levels of profitability and growth that keep them competitive with less scrupulous players," the report states.
"Internal company documents provide examples of tuition increases being implemented to satisfy company profit goals, that have little connection to increases in academic and instruction expenses, and demonstrate that for-profit education companies sometimes train employees to evade directly answering student questions about the cost of tuition and fees."
Among other troubling findings, the report lists
"Education and profit are like oil and water," says Bill Bigelow, author of A People's History for the Classroom, reacting to the committee report. "It should come as no surprise that for-profit colleges spend more on marketing than they do on instruction, and care more about their rate of return than about student learning. At the K-12 level, this offers another piece of evidence of why we need to keep the public in public education. Schools should serve students, communities, and society, not stockholders."
Read the full report here.
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For-profit colleges are following a corporate model that puts profits above students, according to the findings of a U.S. Senate report published Sunday.
The report, "For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success," is the result of a two-year investigation led by Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin and looks at institutions including Apollo Group, Inc., which operates University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college in the U.S., Kaplan, Inc. and Devry, Inc..
The report states that "by 2009, at least 76 percent of students attending for-profit colleges were enrolled in a college owned by either a company traded on a major stock exchange or a college owned by a private equity firm." The for-profit colleges' financial success is therefore watched by shareholders, in a situation that incentivizes profits, not student academic performance.
"The investigation found that while certainly not all for-profit colleges are run by investors looking to make a quick return on investment, too many of them are. It also found that even those for-profit colleges that are committed to the educational mission, that invest in their students and in robust support services, and that offer programs in high demand fields, still engage in troubling practices in order to achieve the levels of profitability and growth that keep them competitive with less scrupulous players," the report states.
"Internal company documents provide examples of tuition increases being implemented to satisfy company profit goals, that have little connection to increases in academic and instruction expenses, and demonstrate that for-profit education companies sometimes train employees to evade directly answering student questions about the cost of tuition and fees."
Among other troubling findings, the report lists
"Education and profit are like oil and water," says Bill Bigelow, author of A People's History for the Classroom, reacting to the committee report. "It should come as no surprise that for-profit colleges spend more on marketing than they do on instruction, and care more about their rate of return than about student learning. At the K-12 level, this offers another piece of evidence of why we need to keep the public in public education. Schools should serve students, communities, and society, not stockholders."
Read the full report here.
For-profit colleges are following a corporate model that puts profits above students, according to the findings of a U.S. Senate report published Sunday.
The report, "For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success," is the result of a two-year investigation led by Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Tom Harkin and looks at institutions including Apollo Group, Inc., which operates University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college in the U.S., Kaplan, Inc. and Devry, Inc..
The report states that "by 2009, at least 76 percent of students attending for-profit colleges were enrolled in a college owned by either a company traded on a major stock exchange or a college owned by a private equity firm." The for-profit colleges' financial success is therefore watched by shareholders, in a situation that incentivizes profits, not student academic performance.
"The investigation found that while certainly not all for-profit colleges are run by investors looking to make a quick return on investment, too many of them are. It also found that even those for-profit colleges that are committed to the educational mission, that invest in their students and in robust support services, and that offer programs in high demand fields, still engage in troubling practices in order to achieve the levels of profitability and growth that keep them competitive with less scrupulous players," the report states.
"Internal company documents provide examples of tuition increases being implemented to satisfy company profit goals, that have little connection to increases in academic and instruction expenses, and demonstrate that for-profit education companies sometimes train employees to evade directly answering student questions about the cost of tuition and fees."
Among other troubling findings, the report lists
"Education and profit are like oil and water," says Bill Bigelow, author of A People's History for the Classroom, reacting to the committee report. "It should come as no surprise that for-profit colleges spend more on marketing than they do on instruction, and care more about their rate of return than about student learning. At the K-12 level, this offers another piece of evidence of why we need to keep the public in public education. Schools should serve students, communities, and society, not stockholders."
Read the full report here.