In the wake of a critical government report, for-profit colleges are defending their reputations, and the Education Department is promising increased oversight. Kelly Field and Sara Hebel describe what happened when a House subcommittee held a hearing to discuss the report.
October 19, 2009
Episode 28: For-Profit Colleges Come Under Scrutiny
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Peer Review

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Academic Assets

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Teaching



Comments
1. tolerantly - October 21, 2009 at 01:08 am
Good. I nearly took an adjunct job in one of these pirate ships. The business with the entry tests is just the beginning of the corruption and theft. This place was very open with its new recruits about how the objective is to get a prospect into the office and signing for loans and grants within 96 hours. Afterwards, no employee is spared in the effort to get student asses in chairs for whatever minimum amount of time proves the student is indeed a student; faculty are called to campus for all kinds of spurious reasons, I suppose in order to document their time "spent on teaching/prep/training activities"; students are booted from their ever-shifting programs if they don't keep up, not that half of them are prepared to put pen to paper anyway. That's when they find out that their credits are essentially useless, and they've borrowed obscene amounts of money for treading water towards something not quite as good as a community-college degree. I don't see how they'll pay the money back; they're back where they started, looking at minimum-wage work.
If the other "colleges" are like that one, I'd say they're essentially machines for robbing the Treasury. Shut 'em down and direct the ed-seekers to the community colleges, whose tuition is a fraction of what these for-profits charge.
2. scottcatledge - October 26, 2009 at 10:26 pm
I was proud of my work as an adjunct professor at a for-profit evening business school for three years. Despite my two doctorates, I was requested to take the CA test for teachers--blew the top off the test so they were satisfied. We got to the point where we were placing %98 of non-smoking graduates in positions that paid well enough that they could both support themselves and repay the loan that they took for tuition. The achievement of the students was impressive because the students were over 80% Hispanic and, under Los Angeles school regs, were not allowed to take courses in Spanish grammar and, of course, English grammar was greatly deemphasized--leaving the bilingual students illiterate in two languages. They had to work their tails off to pass my proofreading class, which was strong in English grammar. I was well paid by my Federal job during the day but I gladly worked for less than 1/2 my daily hourly pay to have the chance to teach young adults who really wanted to learn.
The Director was forever bringing up rip-off schools that had gotten caught to remind us that we provided what they only promised to provide.