For-Profit Schools Recruiting the Homeless

[The Straight Story]

For-Profit Schools Recruiting the Homeless


Recently, for-profit school admissions have skyrocketed. For-profit schools are definitely a good option for some people, but they have their pros and cons. One problem is that credits likely won't transfer, so if you aren't in it for the long haul, and don't get all the way through your education, you're likely to have wasted your time. Without a certificate or degree to show for it, your credits are useless to you.

Another problem is that these schools are wonderful about helping people find financial aid. Now, this doesn't sound like an issue until you're unable to pay back the loans--either because the economy's got you down regardless of your new credential or because you didn't finish your program and thus have no new job prospects.

High school graduates--or even dropouts--from Houston's lower-income high schools, including Jones, Furr, Chavez, and others, are examples of the common demographic that these colleges recruit, and knowing the dangers as well as the advantages of these sorts of schools is extremely important.

However, now the college are recruiting a new group: homeless people and those in halfway houses. These students were given a hard sell, and walked through the application process. At some campuses of the University of Phoenix, up to 5% of the student body is homeless, and many of these students recieve a stipend if they attend 80% of classes and maintain a C average.

All this is wonderful, except that many of these students are saddled with debt they can't repay. Financial aid is easy to come by, but it's taxpayers that end up footing most of the bill, and Houstonians are no exception. Even without state taxes, we pay our share of financial aid debt that's defaulted upon.

http://www.examiner.com/x-41741-Houston-Continuing-Education-Examiner~y2010m5d3-ForProfit-Schools-Recruiting-the-Homeless

[noamnety]

1. Is it a bad thing for tax payers to foot the bill for homeless to go to college?

I think education should be free and tax payer funded. I certainly don't have a problem with tax payers picking up the cost of those who can least afford tuition.

[madfloridian]

3. Not at for profit schools.

Sorry, that is not public education.

[noamnety]

4. If we had a truly public education system that included college

this wouldn't be an issue.

It seems from recruitment tactics though that the "public" schools (that still charge, and homeless still can't afford, go figure), aren't all that interested in recruiting homeless people.

[applegrove]

2. I went to registration day at a for profit school in Montreal. They had recruited a team

of young sales type people to meet with all of us prospective students and were doing the hard sell. It was really sad.

[XanaDUer]

5. "Welcome to Screw U!"

A sad, very good article on how proprietary schools (the kind that open up in strip malls and abandoned business parks, et al)...

are getting many disadvantaged kids (young, female, minority, working-class) to take on debt they cannot afford and then NOT get the degree promised:

http://www.cheerthebook.com/download/Welcome-to-Screw-U.pdf

From Jane Magazine (now defunct), May, 2006.

It can really make one angry.

[Hannah Bell]

6. That's one of the things that "they do better" than traditional schools.

steal from the public.

[XanaDUer]

7. Kick

nt.