Without Romney To Shield Them, For-Profit Colleges Must Face Reality

[unhappycamper]

http://www.republicreport.org/2012/post-election-for-profit-colleges/



On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney praised overpriced for-profit colleges and promised to protect them from accountability. But he lost.


Without Romney To Shield Them, For-Profit Colleges Must Face Reality
Posted at 3:56 pm by David Halperin

Since last week’s election, the Fox News Channel has featured several corporate executives complaining about the results. But it’s likely that few are as upset as CEOs of the troubled for-profit college industry. This sector, which is deeply dependent on the federal government, bet heavily on a Republican victory.

Mitt Romney, who has a financial stake in the industry, went out of his way to praise for-profit colleges, and he pledged to undo Obama reforms aimed at holding these companies accountable for fraudulent practices and poor quality schools. Sparked by Romney’s apparent eagerness to let them off the hook and keep the $32 billion in federal taxpayer dollars flowing into their coffers every year, big for-profit colleges and their executives contributed heavily to Romney and Republican Super PACs.

The for-profit colleges also staffed up their lobbying and corporate ranks with well-connected Republicans like Margaret Spellings and Sally Stroup, both former George W. Bush officials on whose watch the government turned a blind eye to the industry’s misbehavior.

Last week, the for-profit colleges lost their bet on the GOP. Now they face an Obama Administration and U.S. Senate majority — backed by veterans, civil rights groups, and many others — increasingly determined to halt the industry’s torrent of waste, fraud, and abuse.

[xchrom]

1. du rec. nt

[liberal N proud]

2. For profit colleges are corporations

They are run like corporations and should be subject to the same rules and regulations.

[BeyondGeography]

3. The next bubble

Pop.

[MrYikes]

4. so

and I assume that means without our money.

[Stargazer09]

5. I hope they fade away

Honestly, not very many people will hire someone with a "degree" from those places.

[adieu]

6. Why education can never be "for-profit"

The best way to ensure continued cash flow is to not teach the student as much as they can learn. If it's possible to teach in 4 years what others can teach in 2, then you get an extra 2 years' worth of tuition.

Schools should not be "for-profit". They should be "from-profit", like it's an investment, which is what public schools are: an investment by society to benefit society.

[Thor_MN]

8. I believe I heard on the radio that Australia's system works that way

You begin paying back your tuition based on your earnings. Once you exceed a certain income, you start paying amouts affordable to your income level, or something to that effect.

[tridim]

7. For-Profit Prisons should be next

They do nothing but destroy lives and make rich people richer.

[EnviroBat]

9. For-profit colleges are simply in the business of selling "degrees"...

I remember meeting with a recruiter at ITT Technical Institute. I was nothing but an elaborate sales pitch. I kept asking about the tuition costs, and the guy kept dodging the question until the end of his pitch. Then, after all else was said, he came back with "$1900 per credit hour..." I looked at him, stunned and asked, "Are you out of your fucking mind...?" I think for-profit colleges are a joke. I've taken some decent classes at DeVry, but the over-all value of education for the money was crap. Basically buy the class, buy the materials, read the books, take a test. And this is what passes for "education" now...

[Johnny2X2X]

10. Yes!

Obama needs to get tough and I mean really tough on these schools, they are largely scams and drain the pool of financial aid.

I worked for ITT back in the 90s in their job placement office. It was my job to try to place our recent CAD grads into positions in their field. Of the 1st 2 classes only 1 person out of 100+ had a job in a related field within a year. The worst of them need to be 100% cutoff from federal money, the ones in the middle need to be held to a higher standard to improve them enough to make them worthwile.

Every dollar the a Devry or ITT gets is 1 less dollar that a legitimate state school gets.

[catbyte]

11. For-profit colleges are a pox on society

I worked for a federal TRiO program for 22 years before a university transfer, and those schools are nothing but loan mills designed to bilk as many people as they can. Some of those schools like ITT & DeVry have tuition that's almost as costly as Harvard. They suck in gullible, desperate people with big talk about fast job training. They give them the old high pressure sales pitch--even coming to their homes--to sign them up for huge loans they will never see for tuition in programs they will never complete. And even if they managed to complete the course, they are not qualified for anything other than a low-paying, entry level job and huge loans they have no hope of paying back. If a student fell victim to that and defaulted on a student loan, that put the kibosh on any future financial aid. It's a horrible, horrible racket and I've seen too many lives ruined by these crooked outfits.

Arrgh!

[Lasher]

13. They are suffering from the exposure.

From the article linked in the OP:

The truth is catching up with for-profit colleges. Their enrollments are declining – the Wall Street Journal describes these schools as “hemorrhaging students” – and share prices, plummeting even before the election, continue to fall. The University of Phoenix announced in October that it is closing 115 campuses and laying off 800 employees. Another major player, Career Education Corp., said last week that it will cut 23 campuses and 900 jobs. A third big company, Corinthian Colleges, disclosed that the U.S. Department of Education has disputed the company’s compliance with federal government standards for financial responsibility, which puts at risk its eligibility for federal aid.

How can this be? As we all know, everything is always done best in the private sector.

[dembotoz]

12. they filled a percieved hole in the traditional education market

non traditional student

earn a degree while you work in the field

business orientation


they existed because of need ore a percieved need. would be nice if traditional schools filled it

[Viva_Daddy]

14. It's the neverending quest of the rich for MORE, MORE!

"The rich have only ever wanted one thing: EVERYTHING!" - Michael Parenti

[Egalitarian Thug]

15. They're not colleges at all, they're just government guaranteed loan processing centers.

Most businesses won't even consider candidates from those diploma mills.