The for-profit college industry: An education in moral depravity

[dismal]

I would put DeVry on the list of crappy, for profit outfits that call themselves "universities."


Generally speaking, if your "university" needs to hire salesmen to recruit students who were turned down by traditional colleges, then you're not in it for the education.

The problem is that you are confusing "private university" with "for profit university".

Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and MIT are a non-profit universities.

They are also absurdly wealthy universities that charge absurdly high tuition. But apparently that's OK.

While there are non-profits with high tuition they also have a very good reputation and high admission standards.

The for-profit universities are another matter, they're about anyone they can get in the door. Pay your tuition and you're basically guaranteed a degree.

It's the difference between a Rolls Royce and an overpriced Yugo.

So as long as you engage in elitism in your admissions policy and have modestly difficult (albeit not so difficult post-grade inflation) standards it's not morally wrong to be an absurdly wealthy institution charging an absurdly high tuition?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dateline had a great program about this years ago. The Socialist Commie Obama has done absolutely nothing about it.

While there are non-profits with high tuition they also have a very good reputation and high admission standards.

The for-profit universities are another matter, they're about anyone they can get in the door. Pay your tuition and you're basically guaranteed a degree.

It's the difference between a Rolls Royce and an overpriced Yugo.

And profit versus non-profit distinction is not that important anyway. Non-profit merely means that there are no shareholders and all the profit goes to workers including football coaches and their $5mil/year salaries.

In theory yes. In the real world, no. The US Taxpayer is covering a lot of loans for the For Profit schools... the loans that are defaulting because the degrees are worthless or the credits are not transferable. It is costing the US Taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to waste potential student's time and burying them in poor credit. The only winner here is the school.

Also, your problem with calling these Universities does up to those schools, like the "University of Phoenix".

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The problem is that you are confusing "private university" with "for profit university".

Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and MIT are a non-profit universities.

They are also absurdly wealthy universities that charge absurdly high tuition. But apparently that's OK.

While there are non-profits with high tuition they also have a very good reputation and high admission standards.

The for-profit universities are another matter, they're about anyone they can get in the door. Pay your tuition and you're basically guaranteed a degree.

It's the difference between a Rolls Royce and an overpriced Yugo.

So as long as you engage in elitism in your admissions policy and have modestly difficult (albeit not so difficult post-grade inflation) standards it's not morally wrong to be an absurdly wealthy institution charging an absurdly high tuition?

Always can count on dismal to derail a thread. We are talking simple fraud here. You graduate from an accredited school, you have a degree from an accredited school. May cost a mint, but you have a degree that has a particular value in the market. You graduate from a for-profit college, and you have a piece of paper whose value is very unknown and likely to be worthless. So when you advertise that your product will get people jobs, but the school knows that isn't true, we call that fraud... and the US taxpayer is paying for this ruse.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

This has been going on for years, congress was going to cut off financial aid to these schools but their rich buddies stepped in to save the enormous profits off the student aid money. It is literally free money with no strings attached. The government gives the money to the schools and the students have to pay the money back and cannot discharge the debt.

 

[laughing dog]

Wrong. Admission to an accredited program typically requires passing a number of required classes.

typically? I was talking about business schools if you did not notice.
Even if they do have admission standards they could be so low that pretty irrelevant.

You are misinformed. Of course it is possible that admissions standards are low, but typically for accredited business schools, the standards are not low.

 

[doubtingt]

The problem is that you are confusing "private university" with "for profit university".

Harvard, Stanford, Princeton and MIT are a non-profit universities.

They are also absurdly wealthy universities that charge absurdly high tuition. But apparently that's OK.

While there are non-profits with high tuition they also have a very good reputation and high admission standards.

The for-profit universities are another matter, they're about anyone they can get in the door. Pay your tuition and you're basically guaranteed a degree.

It's the difference between a Rolls Royce and an overpriced Yugo.

So as long as you engage in elitism in your admissions policy and have modestly difficult (albeit not so difficult post-grade inflation) standards it's not morally wrong to be an absurdly wealthy institution charging an absurdly high tuition?

Always can count on dismal to derail a thread. We are talking simple fraud here. You graduate from an accredited school, you have a degree from an accredited school. May cost a mint, but you have a degree that has a particular value in the market. You graduate from a for-profit college, and you have a piece of paper whose value is very unknown and likely to be worthless. So when you advertise that your product will get people jobs, but the school knows that isn't true, we call that fraud... and the US taxpayer is paying for this ruse.

And the IVY league degree is worth something because the quality of education is relatively high compared to other higher education options. The quality is high because they pay high salaries to attract the leaders in every discipline.
Is the tuition cost inflated way above the quality of the education that you get?
Yes, the education is not much better than at the top Public Universities that charge 1/3 the tuition. You are paying extra for the history and prestige of the school, which (justified or not) in fact does translate into more job opportunities and high salaries later. But Harvard doesn't spend twice as much in marketing than educators trying to con people into attending and spending that money. People with enough $ and good grades and test scores to go anywhere they want choose Harvard. In addition, much of that extra tuition goes toward the pay of the people doing world class research plus internal funding for that research. Also, most IVY league schools offer non-loan grant $ to students, based upon financial need.

All of that said, are Harvard, Yale, etc.. are MIT, Harvard, Yale, etc., getting rich and paying themselves huge salaries off of encouraging naive students to go into massive debt that is well beyond any career advantage it gives them over going to a public University?
Its quite possible, and if so it is also unethical though not to the downright evil level of the predatory actions of many of these for-profit institutions.

 

[doubtingt]

I would put DeVry on the list of crappy, for profit outfits that call themselves "universities."


Generally speaking, if your "university" needs to hire salesmen to recruit students who were turned down by traditional colleges, then you're not in it for the education.

So the real problem is that these are not educational institutions.

Yes, that combined with the fact that they dishonestly claim to be educational institutions, go to great lengths to convince people not to get a real education and go there instead or to leave their current job and go into great debt to get a degree under false promises of a new career.

IOW, a few people are getting rich (or more likely more extremely rich than they already are) by deliberately preying upon the poor and uneducated and making them even poorer and less educated.

Their morally depraved methods of deceit and emotional manipulation to con people into buying something useless and low quality is no different than that used by most corporations. It is SOP in the "free-market" and not considered at all unethical by its defenders.
What raises this to another level is the desperation of many of the people deliberately targeted, the extreme cost involved, the lack of real education it contributes to, and the lifelong (and even generational) damage done to the people as a result of the combination of these.

 

[barbos]

Dateline had a great program about this years ago. The Socialist Commie Obama has done absolutely nothing about it.

And profit versus non-profit distinction is not that important anyway. Non-profit merely means that there are no shareholders and all the profit goes to workers including football coaches and their $5mil/year salaries.

In theory yes. In the real world, no. The US Taxpayer is covering a lot of loans for the For Profit schools... the loans that are defaulting because the degrees are worthless or the credits are not transferable. It is costing the US Taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to waste potential student's time and burying them in poor credit. The only winner here is the school.

Yes, the school scams taxpayers as well. The difference is a degree. Real universities do so to a much lesser degree than DeVry like scams.

Also, your problem with calling these Universities does up to those schools, like the "University of Phoenix".

Don't follow you here.
My opinion is that is unfortunate that tittle "university" is allowed to be used so loosely.

- - - Updated - - -

Dateline had a great program about this years ago. The Socialist Commie Obama has done absolutely nothing about it.

And profit versus non-profit distinction is not that important anyway. Non-profit merely means that there are no shareholders and all the profit goes to workers including football coaches and their $5mil/year salaries.

In theory yes. In the real world, no. The US Taxpayer is covering a lot of loans for the For Profit schools... the loans that are defaulting because the degrees are worthless or the credits are not transferable. It is costing the US Taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to waste potential student's time and burying them in poor credit. The only winner here is the school.

Yes, the school scams taxpayers as well. The difference is a degree. Real universities do so to a much lesser degree than DeVry like scams.

Also, your problem with calling these Universities does up to those schools, like the "University of Phoenix".

Don't follow you here.
My opinion is that is unfortunate that tittle "university" is allowed to be used so loosely.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The for-profit universities are another matter, they're about anyone they can get in the door. Pay your tuition and you're basically guaranteed a degree.

. The bolded is not accurate either. The drop-out rate of these for-profit universities is extraordinarily high too.

Note my condition: Pay your tuition.

The "for-profits" don't care. They already have the federal loan money. Better for them that the students do drop out.

Agreed. Those that can't pay the bills don't show up as failures of their program.

 

[doubtingt]

Dateline had a great program about this years ago. The Socialist Commie Obama has done absolutely nothing about it.
In theory yes. In the real world, no. The US Taxpayer is covering a lot of loans for the For Profit schools... the loans that are defaulting because the degrees are worthless or the credits are not transferable. It is costing the US Taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to waste potential student's time and burying them in poor credit. The only winner here is the school.

Yes, the school scams taxpayers as well. The difference is a degree. Real universities do so to a much lesser degree than DeVry like scams.

Sure, if "a much lesser degree" included virtually none. A core definition of a scam is "a stratagem for gain", which in the case of exchanging educational services for money means a gain in profits. IOW, a scam is a method of increasing profits, and therefore motivated by profit motive itself. Without the opportunity to profit, there is no profit motive and thus no scam motive. Public Universities go to lengths to turn people away and not admit people from whom they could get $, because they do not profit from having more and more students. They have no real profit motive. In contrast, the top level decision makers at for profit institutions get a direct $ for every additional student. Unlike real schools that have limited capacities that are hard to expand, a for profit school will just rent more space anywhere in town to create more space for as many students as they can con into paying.
A scam means that the scammed party is deceived into giving more than they think they are getting. Amount of profit is the difference between how much one gives and how much they get. Since there are far more ways to increase that difference via deceit than honest methods, scamming is a primary means of increasing profits, and thus engaged in proportionately to the degree of profit motives over other motives (such as ethical motives of fairness, societal betterment, pride in what one produces). As an institution, there is little to no motive to scam by public Universities, whereas that is the main motive at for profit colleges that exist for the sole purpose of profit to shareholders. The only limit to their motive to scam is if their scam becomes so well known due to public outrage about it that they can no longer find enough victims. But even there, the decision makers are often more interested in maximizing short term gains than hoping for more modest but sustained profit, so they may not care that the school goes under in 5 years. The same people will just file bankruptcy and open under a new name with a similar scam.
With Public Universities the level of scam on students is minimal because it is not the function of the school to profit/scam. Once hired, tenured, and secure in there positions, some individual professors may "scam" the school by not really doing the amount of work they are getting paid for. This can indirectly impact the education the students are paying for. This does happen but on a level incomparable to when the entire institution is built around the objective of giving the students as little of what they paid for as possible (i.e., profit). Also, public university profs spend decades in near poverty and lack of job security just to get to that level of post-tenure job security for usually rather modest pay given their select skills and expertise. That requires lots of internal motives other than profit motive, which will limit how much they take advantage of their opportunity to give very little when it arrives. Usually poor quality courses at public universities are more do to incompetence than intent to scam. Incompetent instructors can make it through the system in some places if they persevere, especially if they get well funded for their research, because underfunded schools are desperate for outside financing and will allow a less than stellar instructor to get tenure if they bring in lots of $.
But even there, it isn't a profit motive or intent to scam to increase profit. The school is trying to keep afloat to provide quality education at below cost to the students, but it needs outside funding to do that and if the gov and donations are not enough, then it looks to cut of the $ it gets from professors getting outside research grants.
In sum, the degree of intentional scamming of students to get them to apply and pay tuition at public Universities is very low, and even when students don't get the education they deserve for what they pay, it is rarely the result of any intention to scam for personal profit.

Also, your problem with calling these Universities does up to those schools, like the "University of Phoenix".

Don't follow you here.
My opinion is that is unfortunate that tittle "university" is allowed to be used so loosely.

Sure, and John Oliver would agree with you and he only used the term because these institutions refer to themselves that way. It is part of their false marketing However, policing the use of a word like "University" is tough. The blame is not with government for allowing loose use of the term but the utter disregard for human decency that these corporations have in trying to deceive and con people into massive debt by any means they can legally get away with.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Sure, and John Oliver would agree with you and he only used the term because these institutions refer to themselves that way. It is part of their false marketing However, policing the use of a word like "University" is tough. The blame is not with government for allowing loose use of the term but the utter disregard for human decency that these corporations have in trying to deceive and con people into massive debt by any means they can legally get away with.

But the Government already controls how things may be labeled for certain things.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Dateline had a great program about this years ago. The Socialist Commie Obama has done absolutely nothing about it.
In theory yes. In the real world, no. The US Taxpayer is covering a lot of loans for the For Profit schools... the loans that are defaulting because the degrees are worthless or the credits are not transferable. It is costing the US Taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars to waste potential student's time and burying them in poor credit. The only winner here is the school.

Yes, the school scams taxpayers as well. The difference is a degree. Real universities do so to a much lesser degree than DeVry like scams.

Also, your problem with calling these Universities does up to those schools, like the "University of Phoenix".

Don't follow you here.
My opinion is that is unfortunate that tittle "university" is allowed to be used so loosely.

That was my misunderstanding. I thought you were criticizing another poster for using the term "university" to describe the for-profit schools.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Sure, and John Oliver would agree with you and he only used the term because these institutions refer to themselves that way. It is part of their false marketing However, policing the use of a word like "University" is tough. The blame is not with government for allowing loose use of the term but the utter disregard for human decency that these corporations have in trying to deceive and con people into massive debt by any means they can legally get away with.

I think that the government shares blame here. The problem isn't just what these companies are doing, but also that they qualify for the government student loans. This both makes it much easier for the potential students to get access to the money to "pay" for it and makes them look like legitimate educational institutions since they have (at least implicit) government approval of what and how they're teaching.

If you have a hungry lion sitting in a basement and someone puts a sign on the door saying "Free kittens! Inquire within", then even though the lion is the one eating people, you need to have a huge fucking problem with the guy who put the sign on the door and invited them in.

 

[doubtingt]

Sure, and John Oliver would agree with you and he only used the term because these institutions refer to themselves that way. It is part of their false marketing However, policing the use of a word like "University" is tough. The blame is not with government for allowing loose use of the term but the utter disregard for human decency that these corporations have in trying to deceive and con people into massive debt by any means they can legally get away with.

But the Government already controls how things may be labeled for certain things.

Sure, but not for words as abstract as "University". First, they would have to provide a clear objective definition of what that word means, then require all schools to show proof they meet that definition. It is more straightforward, what something says it "contains peanuts", because peanuts are a well defined concrete thing and there are straightforward methods for measuring whether something contains them.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

STUDY HAUL

How for-profit schools leave their students high and dry.

96% of students at for-profit colleges take out loans. 13% of community college students, 48% of public college students, and 57% of nonprofit private college students do.

For-profit colleges enroll 13% of higher-education students but receive 25% of federal student aid.

The 15 publicly traded for-profit colleges receive more than 85% of their revenue from federal student loans and aid.

42% of students attending for-profit two-year colleges take out private student loans. 5% of students at community colleges and 18% at private not-for-profit two-year colleges do.

1 in 25 borrowers who graduate from college defaults on his or her student loans. But among graduates of two-year for-profit colleges, the rate is 1 in 5.

Students who attended for-profit schools account for 47% of all student loan defaults.

Sources: Sen. Harkin, Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, Education Sector

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/for-profit-college-student-debt

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

But the Government already controls how things may be labeled for certain things.

Sure, but not for words as abstract as "University". First, they would have to provide a clear objective definition of what that word means, then require all schools to show proof they meet that definition. It is more straightforward, what something says it "contains peanuts", because peanuts are a well defined concrete thing and there are straightforward methods for measuring whether something contains them.

Require accreditation to use the term.

 

[doubtingt]

Sure, and John Oliver would agree with you and he only used the term because these institutions refer to themselves that way. It is part of their false marketing However, policing the use of a word like "University" is tough. The blame is not with government for allowing loose use of the term but the utter disregard for human decency that these corporations have in trying to deceive and con people into massive debt by any means they can legally get away with.

I think that the government shares blame here. The problem isn't just what these companies are doing, but also that they qualify for the government student loans. This both makes it much easier for the potential students to get access to the money to "pay" for it and makes them look like legitimate educational institutions since they have (at least implicit) government approval of what and how they're teaching.

I agree with gov limiting student loans, just not about the idea that it would be straightforward how the government would limit the use of the word "University".
Still, loans are not free money. The students must pay it back and its nearly impossible to default on student loans. I don't know how much implicit endorsement it gives that the government is willing to let you temporarily have money to pay for it that you must pay back. However, it clearly does allow people to go to these scam schools who otherwise would not. The governments blame here is not being protective enough of typically young, desperate, naive people and enabling them in using loaned money to make bad choices. But keep in mind that the more that government is required to decide which schools the money goes to, the more costly the loans actually are because all of that investigating and verifying every school takes resources. Perhaps Fed loans should only be allowed for public schools over which there is already some governmental control over the standards.

If you have a hungry lion sitting in a basement and someone puts a sign on the door saying "Free kittens! Inquire within", then even though the lion is the one eating people, you need to have a huge fucking problem with the guy who put the sign on the door and invited them in.

I'd argue that the analogy is more apt if the hungry lion (the school) is the one who wrote and posted the dishonest sign in order to lure victims in. The government is more analogous to someone willing to loan you $5 to take the bus to that basement, without verifying what's in the basement first and knowing that it could be a lion.
Also, by giving you that $5, they don't have any to give to someone else that would have used it more wisely to better themselves and society. They are not causing the harm, but they are not being careful enough to make sure that their "aid" doesn't get used for harm rather than used solely for the positive purpose by which such gov aid is justified under the social contract.

 

[ZiprHead]

We are talking simple fraud here. You graduate from an accredited school, you have a degree from an accredited school. May cost a mint, but you have a degree that has a particular value in the market. You graduate from a for-profit college, and you have a piece of paper whose value is very unknown and likely to be worthless. So when you advertise that your product will get people jobs, but the school knows that isn't true, we call that fraud... and the US taxpayer is paying for this ruse.

I had a co-worker, pretty good guy, who got his degree from one of these unaccredited places. Got him a job as a manager and he was sitting pretty good (all managers were required to have B.A.s or B.S.s). Wasn't long after that the hospital system required all degrees to be from accredited schools. He could get his degree from an accredited school and keep his job or he was canned. Of course virtually none of his credits would transfer so they canned him.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that the government shares blame here. The problem isn't just what these companies are doing, but also that they qualify for the government student loans. This both makes it much easier for the potential students to get access to the money to "pay" for it and makes them look like legitimate educational institutions since they have (at least implicit) government approval of what and how they're teaching.

I agree with gov limiting student loans, just not about the idea that it would be straightforward how the government would limit the use of the word "University".
Still, loans are not free money. The students must pay it back and its nearly impossible to default on student loans. I don't know how much implicit endorsement it gives that the government is willing to let you temporarily have money to pay for it that you must pay back. However, it clearly does allow people to go to these scam schools who otherwise would not. The governments blame here is not being protective enough of typically young, desperate, naive people and enabling them in using loaned money to make bad choices. But keep in mind that the more that government is required to decide which schools the money goes to, the more costly the loans actually are because all of that investigating and verifying every school takes resources. Perhaps Fed loans should only be allowed for public schools over which there is already some governmental control over the standards.

I don't know if you need to limit it to public schools, but there does need to be a higher bar in regards to which institutions qualify for them. The government doesn't need to control the standards, but it does at least need to set the criteria for the standards by which an insitution would be able to receive the aid for its students. Perhaps something similar to homeschooling type rules where you can teach however you want, but in order for your kid to get a high school diploma, you need to cover these various subjects and they've got to be able to pass a standardized test about them.

 

[doubtingt]

Sure, but not for words as abstract as "University". First, they would have to provide a clear objective definition of what that word means, then require all schools to show proof they meet that definition. It is more straightforward, what something says it "contains peanuts", because peanuts are a well defined concrete thing and there are straightforward methods for measuring whether something contains them.

Require accreditation to use the term.

Does that mean that all reference to historic schools and degrees they conferred prior to modern accreditation system must not use the word "University"? (including in history books, etc.).

BTW, I doubt added restrictions to the word University would reduce enrollment at for-profit institutions by more than a 1%.