For-profit colleges are something we all know about and hear the commercials for all the time. Places like Devry University, Phoenix and Westwood College all boast their flexible opportunities to get the degree you need to land a job. They cater to the “non-traditional” student, one who may be older, working a full-time job or just hasn’t had any luck at a traditional four-year college.
With the explosive growth of these schools in the past 10 years, critics including myself are beginning to see these institutions for what they really are: businesses out to make a profit at the expense of the students.
There is a grey area when the product being sold is the idea of success and a stable career. But when it comes to education, profit-hungry companies shouldn’t be able to enter the equation; yet, they have. And with explosive growth.
In 2001, for-profit colleges had an attendance of 766,000 enrolled students, according to a 2012 report by the Senate Education and Labor Committee. In 2010, that number was 2.4 million. The growth of this industry is shocking when compared to similar, traditional institutions.
For-profits grew 225 percent from 1998 to 2008. Compare that to traditional institutions, which grew only 31 percent in the same time period. Obviously the demand is skyrocketing for these types of schools, but research shows the quality of education and prestige from an employers perspective is severely lacking.
The Senate report from 2012 concluded that for-profit colleges showed “overwhelming documentation of exorbitant tuition, aggressive recruiting practices, and abysmal student outcomes.” The real problem is that hopeful students are still flocking to these institutions en masse, seemingly unfazed by these reports. I’m not saying that traditional universities are free of problems of their own, but for-profit colleges in their nature raise a lot of red flags.
Just take The University of Phoenix’s final point of its mission statement, “To generate the financial resources necessary to support the University’s mission.” No college in America should have this in their mission statement. It shouldn’t be the schools goal to finance itself, because when an institution is in that position, it begins seeing people as customers rather than students.
When profits are involved, it becomes the university’s priority to maximize those profits. Whether or not their “customers” land a job with the help of their degree doesn’t affect this. There is little incentive to support the student after graduation.
The average salary for a CEO of a for-profit college is $7.3 million. Compare that to the $250,000 average that college presidents in Georgia make, and you see the stark reality of where for-profit colleges stand and what the CEO’s have to lose.
It is a sad and exploitave industry that takes the optimism of hopeful graduates and capitalizes on it, making sure the students convert their optimism into student loans that these companies rake in. And yes, the loans are plentiful, with an astounding 96 percent of students at for-profit colleges taking them out.
By the sheer fact that you’re reading this, your life and schedule allows you to attend a traditional four-year university. But for many, a fast-paced lifestyle and busy schedule only allows them to attend these profit-driven schools, and they are at a disadvantage in their future job search because of it.
There is hope that regulation will come to these profit hungy universities with more and more studies coming out each year. Until then, I would advise you stay in school––and make it sure it’s a public one!
For further statistics, I recommend visiting this article on ProPublica’s website:
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-for-profit-higher-education-industry-by-the-numbers
