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Can For-Profit Tech Colleges Be Trusted?
snydeq found a story questioning "the quality of education on offer at institutions such as University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT Tech, and Kaplan in the wake of increasing scrutiny for alleged deceptive practices [PDF] that leave students in high debt for jobs that pay little. 'For-profit schools carry a stigma in some eyes because of their reputation for hard sales pitches, aggressive marketing tactics, and saddling students with big loans for dubious degrees or certificates,' Robert Scheier writes. 'Should IT pros looking to increase their skills, or people seeking to enter the IT profession, consider such for-profit schools? And should employers trust their graduates' skills?'"
that leave students in high debt for jobs that pay little
The majority of liberal arts programs would fall into that category.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
I'm doing hiring for my team. I don't care too much about the education: if the candidate can do a decent job on the coding quiz, they could be a Spanish major for all I care.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
DeVry is STEEP for an ABET-T accredited program. One could go to a State school and obtain an ABET-E Engineering degree for a LOT less than the cost of DeVry.
What these colleges have over the State schools; however, is the complete lack of selectivity. They will let just about anyone in, and it'll be up to them to sink or swim. Most of them sink, and some of them swim, and I have no doubt that a very small percentage of bright people, who are otherwise inadmissible to a State School due to circumstances not related to their academic performance, do very well for themselves. That's a tiny tiny percentage though.
It's not all bad, but the lack of selectivity means most students will fail, and do so owing a lot of money. It's not entirely the school's fault. They should, however, raise the admission standards at least a little bit.
Long answer: In the United States at least, if you have no college degree but are interested in putting in the time, money, and effort needed to get one, you will get the biggest bang for your buck at your local community college, possibly followed by some time spent at a nearby branch of your state university system. It's not MIT, RIT, Caltech, Stanford, etc, but it's going to be a pretty solid college education at a very reasonable price, and cost considerably less than the clowns at ITT or DeVry or University of Phoenix will charge you.
The only real exception to this rule is if you qualify for significant financial aid that allows you to attend a fantastic technical school at the same or lower cost than your government-run schools.
I am officially gone from
I've known people on both sides of the spectrum, but I can definitely say that if you come out of a University of Phoenix or DeVry program you're going to face a hiring stigma. Deservedly or undeservedly, these programs have a reputation that ranks decidedly below basically any traditional four year institution. They don't seem like a great deal considering the high cost, but when you compare that to what a candidates other options are (or lack thereof), it still might be a good plan. It sure would suck to have to pay back those loans on a desktop support kind of job salary.
Harvard is a private non-profit. Colleges are either public (state run, taxpayer subsidized) or private (no state funding, money comes from tuition, donations, endowments). Private colleges can either be for-profit or non-profit, which is a tax designation. non-profit colleges will gladly help you rack up 6 figures of debt for a completely useless degree.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It can be a foot in the door (albiet a rather expensive one). We have a pre-sales support engineer from DeVry. He did not have the grades/money to go to GA Tech, so he worked as a test technican while he went to DeVry. He is very good at what he does but I mostly attribute that to his intelligence rather than anything he learned at DeVry.
His degree allowed HR to "check the box" for college education and thus his manager was allowed to interview him and find out that he could be trained as well as tie his own shoes. The customers love him and he often finds very creative solutions to difficult problems. Had he not attended DeVry then he never would have made it past HR or, if he had gotten a job here, it would have been on the production floor.
There is an entire new class of educational institution that Wall Street has dreamed up. They basically use college students to suck up government and private loans. The money from the loans get deposited into the university. The students get an online degree that probably doesn't get them a job. But the student in 100% liable for the loan. You cannot even escape with bankruptcy. But the investors who never gave the student nothing more than a worthless sheet of paper is protected. This scam artist like Phoenix University are mere doppelgangers, they lack the substance of a reputable University like Harvard.
Think global, act loco
Your prospects for salary are based on how rare your skillset is multiplied by how useful it is to a private firm that exists to make money. A doctorate in philosophy might be rare, but it isn't useful to a lot of software companies. A software company might need secretaries, but there are many millions of people who have that skill set. Having one of the two doesn't mean you deserve a great starting salary, you have to have both things going for you, and as people try to achieve that, salary structures change in some industries over time. They only remain the same for jobs where entry barriers are always relatively high or relatively low.
I don't agree with your statements, and neither does this chart.
But then I realized the cable was blue, so I only gave it one star. I hate blue.
Do student loans really help people, or do they just inflate the cost of colleges across the board? I'm 34 and still in student loan debt, probably until I'm 40+
God spoke to me.
THIS. Where are my mod points? The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools. This has become particularly bad in recent years where college has become less about higher learning and more about getting that piece of paper that shows that you payed and are now eligible to do anything beyond grunt work.
I, for one, welcome these "for profit" schools: They are like a parody of the existing system, showing how a diploma is really just about paying the money and playing the game. I am cautiously optimistic that the weakness of their 'shovelware' degrees will wake people up to the fact that every other institution is fundamentally the same.
Many years ago Vocational Technical schools churned out welders, plumbers, electricians, and all sorts of other skilled trades by the boatload. Not everyone was cut out to be a white collar employee, and so if you didn't go to college you could choose these schools to learn a trade and get the skills necessary to get a good job.
These programs have fallen by the wayside along with America's manufacturing. We don't need as many of those workers, so we don't train them.
There is a new economy though, an information economy. Yesterdays Professional Engineers are today's MCSE's and CCIE's designing information systems. These high end jobs still require a college education, as much for the non-technical (e.g. communications) skills as for their technical parts.
For each one of the architects of the information age there are hundreds of technicians. Just like a P.E. may have designed building built by a crew of 1,000 skilled workers in the past, today an information architect designs a data center built by hundreds. These "for profit colleges" specialize in associates (2 year) degrees with the tech skills necessary to fill these jobs. They tech the technical bits, but go really light on the reading, writing, and math skills that would actually give people the fundamentals; just like VoTech schools of old. The welder of old didn't need to know at a 14" beam was required for the weight load and how to calculate it, just how to lay down a perfect bead. The information tech of today doesn't need to know why there's a three layer switching fabric, just how to run Cat5 cables and test them.
Where the "for profit colleges" mislead people is they want them to think they are getting the same education as a 4 year traditional college. They are not. Look at the curriculum online or talk to people who have attended one. These institutions teach you how to do, not how to think.
Somehow it became stigmatized to have not attended college. Never mind that I've seen plenty of 6 figure skilled tradesmen, and seen plenty of 4 year college graduates struggle to get a $40k job. If these schools marketed themselves as VoTech they would be more honest, but no one would go. They are forced into marketing themselves as something they are not, and then folks are surprised, and disappointed with the output.
What has traditionally been the case is beyond this. ITT has been in trouble for at least 15 years because it appeared that they aggressively recruited students, encouraged the students to maximize student loans, without any regard to the ability of the student to enjoy any level of success in the program. It seems that University of Phoenix merely expanded this model of student loan harvesting from the technical school to the University. I am sure that ITT and U of Phoenix both provide a valuable educational experience. What I am not so sure of is if they should be allowed to use federal student loans to provide such services.
Here is the thing that I am sure is never told the incoming student at ITT or U of Phoenix or any of the private diploma mills. A federal student loan never goes away. The student has to pay it back. No bankruptcy, no forgiveness. And the loans are relatively high interests rates, which accrues always, even if one has a delay in payment. The 50K many of these instituions charge can easily become 100K. It is easy to argue that such institution exist solely to transfer money from the federal tax payers purse to the coffers of private corporations. I would not do so. I would only say that in a free market in which these private for-profit institutions are competing, why would we need a federal loan program if they were in fact providing value. Sure, for non profit school such things can keep things fair and allow all qualified students to get an education. But if we are not talking qualified student, and any student, I think the private market would make much more reliable decisions. At least the student would be able to declare bankruptcy, and institutions with a high rate of bankruptcies would not longer receive loans. The free market, in this case, would work.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
those who receive a "free" education seldom appreciate it as much as the one who had to earn (and pay for) that education.
Please support your ideological thesis with a statement of fact.
I believe there to be millions of Doctors and Engineers with publicly-funded educations, in nations all over the world, that appreciate this very much. As do the societies in which they live.
Of course, they are not so unfortunate, as to live in the United States.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Four year colleges by law have to accept all your credits obtained at accredited state community colleges. This really is a money-saver.
So you're saying his degree was worthless and he got $5k-$10k a year pre-tax for it? Man the last 2 years of a 4 year degree costs me as much as a decent sports car, and my salary hike after cutting taxes off for it would be... enough to pay it off in a decade. By then, the sheer volume of experience I have makes up for the gap, and my degree is so old it's worthless in the job market. Not to mention the quality of living drop; the cost is too high, I can't live like that without the ability to actually have a life and afford things (I live alone, no room mates, in a small 1br; a 2br costs twice as much, plus the heating bill, never mind a house). Buying a used car off a dealer lot was a mistake enough.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
There's no such thing as a free education to the true sense of the word. Either you end up directly paying for it, or indirectly through taxation. But don't delude yourself thinking education is "free" and the professors are donating their time 24/7 without a paycheck.
Life is not for the lazy.
...and just showing up isn't good enough.
Most discussions about failure in education fails to note the student's own failure to DO THE WORK.
About 1/3rd of my students fail, not because I'm tough or the material is hard or whatever the usual excuses are - they fail because they just don't do the work! Online quizzes not even opened/started, online discussions not participated in, homework assignments not submitted (not even a "I'm confused" text file as I recommend)...I am very sensitive and responsive to even slight attempts at effort, but if they don't do anywhere close to enough work - and I mean if I gave a 100% on every assignment they did do it still wouldn't hit 60% for the course - then there is nothing anyone else can do for them.
If you are willing to do the work, you can get a fine education at any school at any price.
If you are not willing to do the work, you will fail and lose a lot of money in the process.
And yes, for-profit tech colleges can be trusted. If their product (education) sucked as bad as is implied by the question, they would soon fail because (hey, get this) they didn't do the work.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
I graduated from a good private university, went off to get a tech job in the finance sector and make very good money. Having been down that road now, I realize what all colleges do -- "for profit" or not. They are businesses out to make money.
First, they steer you towards bad loans. For example in New Jersey, the financial aid office steers you towards "NJClass" loans that have a 7% interest rate. You can do better if you go down to your local bank, or even shop around online. But the college gets a cut from this, so they offer you the NJClass loan. The prices you pay, especially for private schools, don't come NEAR what you will be worth in any amount of time. If you assume no scholarships (and I had a half scholarship -- more on that later), a good school can run you anywhere from $15k to $40k a year -- the former for a public state school, and the latter for a private school. Things are variable of course, whether you commute or dorm, but the minimum you can look at nowadays is about $15k, even commuting.
I commuted to a private university with a half scholarship, and 5 years and a major change later, I graduated 65k in debt from school. I however, am one of the luckier ones as I have a real skill and work in an industry that while full of bad ethics, pays really well. I still pay about $450 a month on my loans, and that's after consolidating and everything else. If you figure that a college graduate that comes out of school will make less than a six figure salary, that $450 is going to be debilitating to pay back. And odds are, it will be even higher just because financial firms have gotten more twisted and turned over the years. Remember how the sub prime mortgages got bundled up and sold off as good loans to other people? It happens with school loans TOO. The bank has no reason to keep the loans, and in the 10 years I've been paying back my loans, I have had six different lenders.
The only thing we can do as parents (if you are one, as I am), is to steer your kids to making good choices and spend less money on their education. The return simply doesn't work out well in their favor, especially with the debt load they will likely have to carry. Community college for two years, then a decent school for another two, and graduate with as little debt as possible. I am one of the lucky ones as I said; I have a six figure salary, I have a really good resume, I am good at what I do and I enjoy it to boot. Not everybody is that lucky, and the really unfortunate part is that it will affect their lives in a profound way, while Wall Street (and the industry I work for) will profit handsomely as they help shrink the middle class even more than they already are.
If you want to take a real stand, write your senator and get the allowance for federal student loans raised to a higher level. It's easier to repay a 1.5 or 2% loan than a 7% with variable interest and lots of legalese you can't follow.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
People don't understand what 'non-profit' means. All it means, is that it meets certain requirements as declared by the IRS that affects how it pays taxes.
There are employees who make MILLIONS OF DOLLARS while working for a non-profit organization. There are non-profit organizations that use hard-sale tactics. There are certainly public universities that do this. That employee people whose sole job is to market the school and/or the degree they are selling to CHILDREN.
My public university actually decided to bull-doze parking lots because someone did some math and declared that, 'If we had less parking, more students would park illegally, and we'd net $x million of dollars over y years.' So they tore it out. I'm also 100% convinced the average starting salaries for my major were grossly inflated. I even worked at our 'telefund' while I was a student. That was the Universities calling center that would call up former students and try to get them to give us money. We were even instructed on how to 'Get them talking about the old 'ol days' so they'd be less likely to say No. And, if you have a transcript mailed to any address (that isn't another university) - even if it's not yours - they will send junk mail to that address trying to get donations and sell homecoming tickets and alumni vacation packages. You can't stop the mailings. Even when you say, 'Look, I don't live there, the people that do were just friends who let me crash there for a few weeks while I was trying to get a job. They don't want the junk mail. Stop sending it. Please. Here is my new address, send it here'.
It's all about $$$. For-profit colleges and universities just haven't jumped through enough hoops (ahem, $$$) to get recognized as a 'real' school yet. The accreditation bodies are even worse than the universities. And thanks to Federal Student Loans, anyone can get as much money as they want. 'You want to major in Art History? And you want 70k in loans each year? Sure!'.
Not all public education is bad. I paid only $1800/semester(that includes free book rental) for my public college. Over the past 15 years of them teaching CIS, they had 100% of their graduates from CIS found a job in their field within a year and with an average starting wage of $78k. It's a smaller department, but they do well. Something like 20 students per semester. I even got to enjoy a few alumni guest speakers from Microsoft, some large world wide insurance company, and one that works with banks and the government to use heuristics to discover money laundering. Many of our alumni go onto top companies.
~$3.6k/year was a decent trade.
Heck, my state's primary college would have only cost me $2k/semester, and they're so well known for genetics/law/CS/Computer-engineering that large portions of my in-state tuition was paid for by bio-engineering patents and second-semester freshmen computer engineers get contacted by Intel/AMD/IBM. Actually, my state uni has listed many years in top 10 world wide in several research and engineering fields.
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/02/04/for-profits-data/
* CEOs of for-profit colleges receive up to 26 times the amount of pay that the heads of traditional universities do.
* Many of the schools make up to ninety percent of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers, through the Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and other federal assistance used by their students. 91.5 percent of Kaplan's revenue comes from the government, along with 88 percent revenue at the University of Phoenix.
* Just 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, yet they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults.
Disclaimer/Cred: I've been an instructor at a for-profit "tech" school, and at a NFP community college from 2008 to present.
While teaching at a nationwide chain of tech schools, I personally found the certificate programs to be of dubious value based on their high-cost, almost $14,000, and the mandated grading structure in which students that completed software guided "labs" and had daily attendance were mathematically incapable of receiving a failing grade. I also felt like admissions/recruitment staff overstated the value of the program, but that most students had more sober expectations than our marketing hype suggested.
(Note: I've found the actual degree track AS/AA or BA/BS or Masters programs to be of significantly higher quality. Granted, having gone to a large Midwestern university, I find the for-profit "college" experience to lack some of the extra-curricular qualities that I think heavily contribute to quality college education. Particularly at the AS/AA level, I find the career-ed (tech) coursework to be similar to accelerated CC offerings.)
While I felt the program was not in the interest of the student (and eventually resigned), I will admit that it did serve a population that would have been likely to fail in the community college environment. Additionally, it did give them minimal exposure to the industry that they would have otherwise had a difficult time getting. The most valuable service was career placement, in which most of them got jobs at very rudimentary scripted help desks, which could get them enough "experience" to get past the HR goons and maybe get some attention with vendor certs or good interviewing toward more hands-on tech gigs.
Granted, as I've sat on hiring boards, I would find the certificate alone to be of minimal value, and would identify more strongly with an untrained applicant who showed similar skills through self-education (e.g. repairing family computers, experimented with Linux, authored simple web pages) on the basis that self-education can be extremely valuable with a good on-the-job training program.
I try to make it a point to discourage college certifications (and to set realistic vendor certification expectations) and push the AS as being far more valuable to employers that also opens the door to 4 year schools should they decide to go. Most of the counselors at the for-profit or non-profit community colleges generally tend to encourage students to simply do whatever they've already chosen to do, which is usually certification as a low-hanging fruit, as most simply want to avoid the general education courses.
Unfortunately, the for-profit schools are doing a far better job of providing instruction of any quality that is often more ideal for working individuals. Working two jobs (FT programmer, PT instructor) and living fairly far from any university, has made me use University of Phoenix for my MBA program. As a student, compared to other peers taking programs in low-middle quality state-schools, I find UOP's offering to be comparable on content. That said, I do think that the accelerated nature does cause some topics to be handled superficially, and without proper self-motivation, promptly forgotten.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"
When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out.
A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?'
The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.
Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.
No, the problem is not flatly "government guaranteed loans", but the predatory for-profit schools who have mastered the acquisition of government-basked student aid (grants and loans). They will accept anyone and inflate their expectations just so they can enroll them in classes (without care for the quality of the classes or the education actually received) so that they can receive government funds through the student.
Ahahaha, oh my. Did you just mention Adam Smith? Have you read "Wealth of Nations?" No, don't answer that. I know you haven't. Let me quote some Adfam Smith to you, my friend, and we will see how long it takes for you to start calling him a commie. I guarantee after I am done here, you will never attempt to drop that name again.
"Laws and government may be considered in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and to preserve to themselves the inequality of the goods which would otherwise be soon destroyed by the attacks of the poor, who if not hindered by the government would soon reduce the others to an equality with themselves by open violence. The government and laws hinder the poor from ever acquiring the wealth by violence which they would otherwise exert on the rich; they tell them they must either continue poor or acquire wealth in the same manner as they did."
You like that one? I'm just getting started. This next one is a bit of a long passage, but oh so worth the read:
"His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
His employers constitute the third order, that of those who live by profit. It is the stock that is employed for the sake of profit, which puts into motion the greater part of the useful labour of every society. The plans and projects of the employers of stock regulate and direct all the most important operations of labour, and profit is the end proposed by all those plans and projects. But the rate of profit does not, like rent and wages, rise with the prosperity, and fall with the declension of the society. On the contrary, it is naturally low in rich, and high in poor countries, and it is always highest in the countries which are going fastest to ruin.
Their superiority over the country gentleman is, not so much in their knowledge of the public interest, as in their having a better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by this superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest and that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction, that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public.
To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.
To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens."
Good stuff, huh? He is saying that his "invisible hand" only applies to land owners and laborers (the first two of his three class
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Wow. He did not believe that the free market knows best, as demonstrated from the quotes! He thought of a free market differently than you do, he recognized that a market needs regulations in order to stay free. His work must be understood in the context of mercantilism, which he disagreed with, but he did not disagree with government regulation in general.
However, I will concede the point that education costs money, and while an education may be free to the individual, society still pays the cost. And when education is free, it is free regardless of whether the outcome involves the recipient of the education getting a better job. Finally, as I mentioned, education is a positive externality, and a free market will not allocate enough resources towards education.
What I will not concede, however, is that there exists any rational adult who is confused on what the term "free education" means. I highly doubt anyone believes teacher's pay and the cost of schools and books just materialize out of thin air, so your entire diatribe against free education is meaningless. Anyone who is capable of understanding that already does. You just wasted everyone's time in order to attempt to denigrate the role of government in education. At least you walked it back into the realm of sanity by the end, so I guess my work here is done. See you next time!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton