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Texas Closes 16 Campuses of Career College for Data Discrepancies

August 3, 2011, 10:20 pm

The agency that licenses career schools in Texas has accused a for-profit college of submitting inaccurate information about students’ completion and job-placement rates, and has told the college that it must immediately stop enrolling new students at its 16 campuses in the state, according to the blog Higher Ed Watch. The agency, the Texas Workforce Commission, said in a news release that it acted against the company, ATI Enterprises Inc., after finding that student-outcome reports the company provided didn’t match data the commission collected itself.

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  • http://twitter.com/#!/ProprietaryEd ForProfitEd

    This makes me wonder how many other for-profit schools are manipulating their job placement rates.

  • czander

    According
    to Coutts (2009) about 50 percent of University of Phoenix students default on
    their student loans, three times the percentage at private, nonprofit colleges.
    This problem is pervasive among these for-profit schools where strategy focuses
    on profits over education. If anyone doubts this consider the fact that since
    he founded Apollo, Sperling has collected over half a billion dollars. In 2009
    Apollo Group paid its co-CEO’s Charles Edelstein $11.3 million and Greg
    Cappelli $7.3 and its president and chief operating officer Joe D’Amico at $6.5
    million, meanwhile most of its faculty are poorly paid adjuncts without
    doctorates (they spend 28 cents out of every dollar for instruction). While
    these executives get rich (32 cents out of every dollar goes to administrative
    costs) their students do not get an education but instead become saddled with
    debt. The graduation rate is a paltry 6 percent and the median debt over
    $30,000, (Kiley, 2010). The default rate hovers at between 70 and 90 percent.
    The for-profit doctoral programs are even worse with over 90 percent of those
    enrolled failing to get their doctorate after 6 years and instead they become
    burdened with enormous debt. Even if one managed to obtain a doctorate from one
    of these institutions most academics would consider it worthless and in some
    cases public school districts do not recognize the credits or degree as an
    entitlement for a salary increase or upgrade. Capella offers an online Ph.D.
    specialization in Addiction Psychology. Who is on the faculty? They do not say.
    Could this be approved by the American Psychological Association? No way. In
    addition they are experts in coming up with degree offerings that have titles
    to purposely appeal to some hot vocational employment, for example Capella
    offers an online Master of Science in Homeland Security.

  • davidbinder

    Student aid default rates are important metrics, but let’s work with the actual data.  The default rate of the University of Phoenix is far below the 50% czander reports citing Coutts (2009).  The actual (official DoE) rate for FY2008, the most recent year for which data are available, is under 13%, which can be found at http://www.nslds.ed.gov/nslds_SA/defaultmanagement/cohortdetail.cfm?sno=0&ope_id=020988.  The reported data are current as of August 8, 2011.

    An institution can lose FFEL Program and/or Direct Loan Program eligibility due if its FY 2008 official cohort default rate is greater than 40.0% or its FY 2008, FY 2007, and FY 2006 official cohort default rates are 25.0% or greater (this latter metric also includes loss of Pell Grant authority).  The University of Phoenix is far under these thresholds. 

    As for whether faculty have doctoral degrees, the reality is that many faculty at other institutions do not hold doctoral degrees, let alone in-field doctoral degrees.  In fact, PhD programs’ faculty at regionally accredited institutions do have doctoral degrees whether the program is at a public, for-profit, or NFP institution.  For any regionally accredited institution to offer such degrees, the regional accreditor must be satisfied as to the quality of the faculty.  At the Masters level, it is common that most faculty do have doctoral degrees but that some have relevant Masters degrees.  The usual guide is that at least 75% of credits be taught by doctorally qualified faculty.  At the bachelors level, the standard is that faculty hold at least a relevant Masters degree.  Even so, it is common that a majority of faculty hold doctoral degrees. 

    It is correct that APA will not accredit wholly online programs.  The same is true of the American Bar Association.  None the less, these accreditors are in the minority of specialty accreditors.  One suspects that these two will become more accepting of online programs over time as “traditional” programs increasingly incorporate online courses into their curricula. 

    There is much on these topics to be debated, but let’s use the actual data in analyzing these issues.

  • http://twitter.com/#!/ProprietaryEd ForProfitEd

    Wrong!  The 3 year default rate at UoPx is 21.17%  I wonder what the lifetime default rate is? The loan repayment rate is only 44%.

    http://federalstudentaid.ed.gov/datacenter/cohort.html

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