Higher education institutions have recently come under great scrutiny from both the general public and government leaders. In particular, for-profit institutions have to defend themselves as their entire business operations are under governmental review. According to an Inside Higher Ed news release (2010), the Government Accountability Office's (GAO's) found evidence of for-profit recruiters encouraging students to commit fraud and that questionable or misleading practices were identified at all 15 for-profit colleges that investigators visited. Congress is now looking into their recruiting practices, accreditation, quality of education, and student loan issues. For-profit institutions find themselves under this examination due to their record making financial profits, while students obtain much higher federal loans to pay their tuition; therefore, it is fair to claim that these universities are benefiting from the federal government. The intent of this paper is to examine the recent trends of for-profit institutions and review some of the concerns regarding them.
Traditional higher education institutions in America have recently gone through great budget reductions. These budget restraints resulted in shrinking personnel and turning away students because they lack the resources to handle the demand. Concurrently, for-profit institutions have invested heavily into their educational programs and are enrolling a record number of students. “Enrollment in the country's nearly 3,000 career colleges has grown far faster than in the rest of higher education—by an average of 9 percent per year over the past 30 years, compared with only 1.5 percent per year for all institutions” (Wilson 2010). For-profit universities do an outstanding job focusing on students’ needs with educational programs that tailor towards non-traditional students. In comparison, they offer various degrees with flexible class schedules and many more online programs. While these business practices have unequivocally fueled their substantial growth, the concerns of their business processes are increasing as well.
A number of for-profit institutions have been accused of instituting inappropriate recruiting techniques. These institutions have placed recruitment quotas on recruiters and tied financial bonuses to the number of recruitments. These practices have caused recruiters to become more aggressive in their recruiting techniques, which lead to them to purposefully misinform potential students, and to sign up those students who obviously do not meet college standards. For-profit universities could support better recruiting practices if they advise recruiters to focus on enrolling quality students, instead of focusing on quotas and financial incentives based on the bottom line.
There are a variety of Accreditation agencies that examine and grant accreditation to for-profit institutions when minimum criteria are met. The primary reason why for-profit universities need to be accredited is because they can only receive federal financial aid, such as, student loans for their students if they have accreditation. The government is now evaluating these accreditation agencies and there seems to be an emerging trend of stricter criteria for obtaining such accreditations. Furthermore, some for-profit universities have been accused of having subpar educational programs and accreditation agencies have set out to review the quality of such programs.
For-profit institutions have relatively higher tuition rates and they can be significantly more than that of a community college or even a four-year state institution. According to the College Board (2009), the average annual tuition this year at a public, two-year college is $2,544, compared with $14,174 at a private, for-profit institution. In order to finance their education, students are taking out loans in record numbers to pay these hefty tuitions, and consequently, having difficulties paying back these loans once they have completed their degrees. Evidently, students who graduate from for-profit institutions carry a higher amount of student loans and are more likely to default in repaying them. “Forty-two percent of students who graduate with an associate degree from a for-profit college leave with more than $20,000 in debt, compared with 1 percent of those who graduate with the same degree from a community college” (Gonzalez 2009). For-profit institutions need to re-evaluate their pricing structures to make their educational degrees more affordable, and therefore lowering the amount of student loans. If they do not act immediately, they may be forced to comply with the proposed “gainful employment” rule being championed by congressional leaders. This new rule would stop federal aid to programs whose students have a substantial debt and are unlikely to make repayments.
For-profit institutions will continue to play an important role in educating American citizens. They offer an assortment of educational programs and they are a perfect match for non-traditional students due to the flexible time schedules and online courses options. However, the general public and congress cannot divert from the fact that for-profit executives are making record profits from American citizens. For-profit institutions need to focus on providing a high quality education at a more reasonable price, and they need to appropriately recruit students who can be successful. Last year, President Obama outlined a goal of having the world's highest number of college graduates by 2020, and the bottom line is that for-profit institutions will play a vital role in order for this plan to succeed.
RESOURCES
College Board. (2009). Trends in College Pricing 2009. Retrieved from
http://trends.collegeboard.org/files/2009_Trends_College_Pricing.pdf
Gonzalez, Jennifer. (2009). For-Profit Colleges, Growing Fast, Say They Are Key to Obama’s Degree Goals. Retrieved from
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Say-The/49068/
Inside Higher Ed. (2010). Has the Conversation Changed? Retrieved from
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/08/09/forprofit
Wilson, Robin. (2010). For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education’s Landscape. Retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Change-/64012/
No comments:
Post a Comment