There is an Alice in Wonderland quality to the arguments being used against the proprietary sector in recent weeks. As a founding president of a community college and a state university, I was especially disappointed to see the litany of arguments against for profit higher education paraded out in a recent article in the Huffington Post by Dr. Gail Mellow. Dr. Mellow is a strong leader and a fine president. But these arguments are infused with bias as well as being flat inaccurate. Here are the implications of these arguments:
- It would be good public policy to roll back more than 30 years of progressive movement towards funding students, not institutions. The implication is that the students who have chosen for-profit colleges don’t know what they are doing. This type of paternalism was unhealthy before the Pell Grant and Stafford loan programs were conceived and it is unhealthy today.
- It is acceptable to throw more than 2.5 million students out of college. They have chosen their path and there is no reason to expect that they will go to another type of college if this opportunity is taken from them, since they have already passed on that choice.
- It is acceptable to throw more than 250 million people currently employed at already accredited colleges out of work despite the fact that many of those colleges have superior records in educating and graduating students when compared to the traditional sector.
This is “through the looking glass” reasoning. What’s up is down. And what’s down is up. Here’s some more:
- It is argued that the sector spends too much on marketing. But we know that many non-profit schools have an extremely high “cost of acquisition” of their enrolled students.
- Our students are the very people that President Obama has decreed we attract and succeed with. The students enrolled at career colleges are more heavily risk-factored then even community college students. And career colleges do, on balance, as good or better a job with them than many non-profits. How do will the country’s colleges and universities attract these previously ignored students without aggressive outreach and marketing, osmosis? Maybe, a “build it and they’ll come” approach? Except that we did that already and they didn’t come.
- It is argued that our students are being short-changed, along with the taxpayers and the public colleges they opted not to attend.
- The for-profit sector operates without any institutional subsidy from the state or federal government. That means they consume fewer, not more dollars.
- For-profit colleges pay taxes, last year more than $2 billion. That means they contribute to the country’s health, not detract from it.
- For profit colleges succeed with high-risk students at competitive rates with the publicly subsidized colleges. That means there is a good return to society with these at risk students, not a bad one.
- There is a high loan default rate at for-profit colleges. With poor students in higher priced programs during a grinding recession, that is sadly accurate. If, however, our students were allowed to pay down their loans on a sliding scale driven by their annual taxable income, the problem would abate significantly and people who want what we have to offer would be fairly served by their government. Furthermore, when our share of the federal money is compared to others’ share, all in, we have a smaller proportion.
- Even with the defaults, the loan program has a positive balance for the federal government.
- Faculty engagement at for-profit colleges is alleged to be deficient. Not true. Our learners engage with faculty, discuss issues and talk with counselors. In truth, they get more, not less attention.
And that gets to the real issue we should all be discussing. We all need to do a better job at helping students persist and achieve their educational goals. This isn’t a community college or a for-profit problem; it is a higher education problem. If we actually make a national commitment to what works, for-profit education will be a central part of it.
Former Congressman Peter Smith is Senior Vice President of Academic Strategies and Development for Kaplan Higher Education. He was the founding president of California State University at Monterey Bay and recently wrote a book, Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent.