Posted on 03/14/2010 6:12:53 AM PDT by reaganaut1
One fast-growing American industry has become a conspicuous beneficiary of the recession: for-profit colleges and trade schools.
At institutions that train students for careers in areas like health care, computers and food service, enrollments are soaring as people anxious about weak job prospects borrow aggressively to pay tuition that can exceed $30,000 a year.
But the profits have come at substantial taxpayer expense while often delivering dubious benefits to students, according to academics and advocates for greater oversight of financial aid. Critics say many schools exaggerate the value of their degree programs, selling young people on dreams of middle-class wages while setting them up for default on untenable debts, low-wage work and a struggle to avoid poverty. And the schools are harvesting growing federal student aid dollars, including Pell grants awarded to low-income students.
“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.”
For-profit trade schools have long drawn accusations that they overpromise and underdeliver, but the woeful economy has added to the industry’s opportunities along with the risks to students, according to education experts. They say these schools have exploited the recession as a lucrative recruiting device while tapping a larger pool of federal student aid.
“They tell people, ‘If you don’t have a college degree, you won’t be able to get a job,’ ” said Amanda Wallace, who worked in the financial aid and admissions offices at the Knoxville, Tenn., branch of ITT Technical Institute, a chain of schools that charge roughly $40,000 for two-year associate degrees
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
'Unfortunately, our traditional non-profit four year programs have a 48% graduation rate, approximately a $50K/year total tuition & Room & board costs, an no accountability. The gov't should focus industry wide an apply the same standards of measuring value and outcomes. There should not be a perceived or real targeting of business as this administration already wears a scarlet "S".'
and #4 from Brian
'You think this type of indentured servantry is ruthless?
Wait until students at traditional colleges and universities realize they've been had . . . sold on the cultural assumption that a college degree (which amounts to nothing more than the myth of credentialism) is an absolute imperative to leading a meaningful, respectable life. The students at these traditional schools are, indeed, treated like customers, and--as we know from Marketing 101--the customers are always right. Hence, grade inflation is rampant, and schools compete to enroll students with lures like state-of-the-art gyms and upscaled student housing.
Higher education is THE next bubble to burst.'
Excuse me, but this sounds a lot like the public school system.
Of course, there is one big difference. The taxpayers are not on the hook for generous retirement plans that go on for 30 years for teachers and administrators, like we are for the public school system.
Compare the costs of higher education and health care. The more the government gets involved (health care-Medicare, Medicaid/higher education-loans and grants), the higher the costs rise.
Then, after costs have risen to the point where people without government subsidies can’t afford them anymore, liberals propose government takeovers of the whole system.
Obama campaigned on a promise that government (i.e. taxpayers) should pay for 4 years of post-high school study for all students. It’s all part of the same scheme. Get the camel’s nose under the tent a little at a time and pretty soon, the camel wants to be totally inside.
Unless the degree is accredited... and in the following fields: engineering, math, nursing, accounting to name a few, your child’s degree in anything that doesn’t require math is useless.
I have a niece that graduated, with honors, with a degree in “International Studies”.
She is now the head cashier at a grocery store.
“Liberal Arts” degrees are frickin’ useless.
Sad indeed.
Several years ago....I was friends with a Air Force NCO was had grown up as a German. He went off to German university and eventually gotten a degree in business management. His one and only job after graduating (4.5 years for a German degree)....was a statistics job in some minor insurance office. He was making a bare-bones salary that paid essential bills only...while still living at Dad’s house. After a year, he gave up....joined the US Air Force....and four years later...was making twice that original insurance salary.
Statistically....if you go into any state and then measure each individual job....less than ten percent of all jobs require a bachelor’s degree. If you walk into any court house to pay taxes or settle a problem....ninety-eight percent of all the jobs there require nothing beyond a high school diploma. If you go into any McDonalds....other than a year or two of management training for the management team...no one else needs anything beyond a high school diploma.
I don’t buy this growth discussion on college degrees. If you go back to the glory days of high school education before 1945...the vast majority (probably over 90 percent) of the teachers in America...had a two-year degree. My grandmother in the 1910-era....had six months of some teacher college...before she started to teach at a two-room school in the boonies of Alabama.
We are vastly overselling this entire degree thing as being the answer. Yet, we can’t even graduate kids out of high school. There’s a problem here...but we aren’t attacking the right one.
Several years ago....I was friends with a Air Force NCO was had grown up as a German. He went off to German university and eventually gotten a degree in business management. His one and only job after graduating (4.5 years for a German degree)....was a statistics job in some minor insurance office. He was making a bare-bones salary that paid essential bills only...while still living at Dad’s house. After a year, he gave up....joined the US Air Force....and four years later...was making twice that original insurance salary.
Statistically....if you go into any state and then measure each individual job....less than ten percent of all jobs require a bachelor’s degree. If you walk into any court house to pay taxes or settle a problem....ninety-eight percent of all the jobs there require nothing beyond a high school diploma. If you go into any McDonalds....other than a year or two of management training for the management team...no one else needs anything beyond a high school diploma.
I don’t buy this growth discussion on college degrees. If you go back to the glory days of high school education before 1945...the vast majority (probably over 90 percent) of the teachers in America...had a two-year degree. My grandmother in the 1910-era....had six months of some teacher college...before she started to teach at a two-room school in the boonies of Alabama.
We are vastly overselling this entire degree thing as being the answer. Yet, we can’t even graduate kids out of high school. There’s a problem here...but we aren’t attacking the right one.
What is you degree in?
I would not entirely discount the fact that one of the NYT’s competitors (The Washington Post) is being kept alive financially by its for profit educational affiliate (Kaplan) as a motivation for this article.
That’s exactly what I thought. I majored in business. I well remember the time when my German professor and my history professor literally begged me to change my major to their subjects. You would not believe the career opportunities out there for people who major in those subjects. It was a bunch of B.S.
Since I was working my way through college as a secretary so I wouldn’t have to be a secretary any more, I declined. I already knew a whole lot of secretaries with degrees in English and history and I wasn’t going to fall into that trap.
My husband is 12 credits short of his engineering degree, but has been working as a manufacturing engineer for almost 20 years. The man is brilliant at what he does, and the companies that were smart enough to take him on (smaller companies led by self-made men like my hubby) thank their lucky stars that they found such a shining gem. In a larger company his resume wouldn't make the first cut.
While in my "family support role", I found whatever work I could that would allow me time with my kids, not caring so much about salary as I did about flexibility. I learned the other side of Health insurance (filing claims vs paying), transportation billing, retail catalog customer service, sales support, loan auto financing and more.
I also entered into Direct Sales and there received some of the best training and education (pretty much for free, mind you) in my life. I taught myself Photoshop because I liked designing my own marketing materials.
In 2006 the furniture store I had been working for went belly up. I loved my job there and the creative and time flexibility I had, and just could not bear to go back to regular office work, so I decided to re-career.
I went through a 6 month IT training course - it cost $25,000.00. During that time, I earned three Microsoft Certifications including an MCSA. (passed all my exams on the first try - never had a score lower than the mid-800's--learned Server 2003 in about a month's time beginning to end). The idea was to get some "credentials" that would put me on a path out of administrative work and administrative pay. However, with the crash in the economy, salaries in lower level IT are going down down down.
I've taken on all the negatives of going back to work full time - I work 50 -55 hrs a week, do a 24-7 on-call rotation one week every month plus other non paid time in company promotion all summer and because I'm in a small firm, I'm STILL acting as receptionist besides. And yet, my salary is still in what I could consider the administrative realm. As of now, I am not sure I made the right choice here. I have learned a ton, but at this point could probably land an executive admin position somewhere and be earning more than I am working my butt off in IT.
It costs $30,000 to train in "law enforcement career" at National American University? Who'd of known?
>>Higher education is THE next bubble to burst.
With your combinaton of industry experiance and IT certs, you should find plenty of opportunities.
Tech people who actually understand the business they are supporting are worth their weight in gold.
With so many unemployed programmers and systems people, salaries are dropping like a rock as people fight to take any work to stay above water. The open support positions I’ve been seeing in my area are paying 10-12 dollars an hour. No thanks
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