Poverty Is a Factor in Students’ Choice of College Type

This is a shame, because in many cases the for-profits are more expensive.  But they do a great job of marketing and coming up with financial aid packages that attract students.  Public institutions just don’t match their effort and systems. 

This is a superficial, poorly reasoned through report that just further confirms how little educational research foundations, think tanks, and academia truly understand the for-profit school models that are out there, much less approach the investigation of this sector of higher education with open minds and an interest in objective research. There are a dozen reasons why students from poverty have been enrolling at for-profits universities in greater numbers over the course of the past decade. The report’s authors miss many of these (e.g. for-profit schools are far more likely to offer short-term diplomas that lead directly to jobs), and incorrectly attribute others (e.g. for-profits have far greater course availability and geographic distribution that do community colleges, contra the report).

Moreover, they make a key central claim–that educational choice is narrowing for students in poverty–that they don’t back up with any data whatsoever. Saying that “the range of institutional options for low-income young adults has clearly narrowed” over the past decade by examining the percentage of students from poor backgrounds enrolled in different types of institutions is like saying that the range of car options for drivers narrowed from 1920 to 1980 because Ford lost market share over that period. Market share /= market size or option availability. It is likely the case that for-profit institutions have been growing the size of the postsecondary market by offering educational options (online programs, short-term diplomas, etc.) that didn’t exist before in the same way that Southwest grew air travel by offering routes and price points that hadn’t existed before, i.e. moving from nonconsumption to consumption.

This isn’t to say that for-profit colleges don’t have dangers, abuses, etc.. I’d also argue that the report’s implication that four-year publics and non-profits are doing an extremely poor job of addressing the higher education needs of the poor is probably accurate,. Still, it feels like a throwaway report that could have been written in an afternoon session on NCES. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation reportedly looks for accountability for their philanthropic investments–I hope they didn’t invest much in this ‘Portraits’ series from IHEP.

“Poverty matters a great deal…”  Wow!  What an amazing discovery!  Poor kids don’t go to Harvard.  Rich ones, at least, have the possibility.  Another example of a silly funded (i.e. wasted money) study for what is common sense.  There is such a Grey area between “for profit” and “not-for-profit.”  It is quite hypocritical for many “not for profit” institutions that are now conducting their affairs as any  business would, that is, to make money, to be so disgruntled against the admitted for-profit institutions that do help a large category of students.  To say a “not for profit” is not out for anything but money these days is a blanket lie and students along with any person with common sense knows this. It is shameful and amongst the reasons that the U.S. is far behind other countries in science and math.  Standards for admission have dropped tremendously over the past three decades. The question is:  Why, for so long, has the U.S.A. been behind Asian nations and other countries in subjects that are supposedly taught at every level?  Answer this. When higher education sold its soul to the devil for a dollar, (and this includes all “nor for profit”) universities, then the slide downhill began.  It can be corrected but it takes leadership. It takes leadership that sees beyond money and realizes what the true function of a university is in society. Every institution is out to make a profit.  This is hypocrisy in its most poignant form.  I think the money for such studies as this could be put to better use.

Poor kids DO go to Harvard, to Yale, to Cornell, and to any number of other well-endowed private universities and colleges which have the resources to offer generous, no-loan financial aid packages which meet full need. But these universities are recruiting poor kids who have managed to excel academically and who have been well-advised. You should be more concerned about the poor kids who are not going to their state universities and community colleges.