Q: Recent articles in the press have speculated about the declines in enrollment at some large for profit colleges. Are there any CM readers who've taught at these places and who can share some insight?
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EDUCATION
FROM GAWKER.COM
Good Riddance to 'For Profit Colleges’
by Hamilton Nolan
8/23/11
Americans are smartening up and staying the hell away from school. We recently came to our senses and started avoiding law school. And now, we're avoiding fake colleges, as well. We'll make something of ourselves yet, fellow Americans!
Melissa Korn reports in the WSJ that the "For Profit College" industry—let's just call them fake colleges, in order to speak clearly and also to receive entertaining emails of protest from paid PR representatives—are now doing terribly. Which is great! Would you ever advise someone who was actually a friend of yours to go into deep debt in order to obtain a degree from "Devry" or the "University of Phoenix?" No, so we shouldn't let poor kids who don't know any better o vulnerable people just getting out of the military (prime recruiting targets) go do that, either. Some good news:
- "Undergraduate new-student enrollment fell 25.6% at DeVry's namesake university in the quarter ended June 30."
- "At Corinthian, which implemented changes to its recruiter compensation in April, new-student enrollment declined 21.5% in the first calendar quarter."
- "Kaplan reported a 47% decline in new-student enrollment for the June quarter."
I'm guessing that many of the Coleman "University", ITT Tech could'vebeens looked at their cousins, friends, Facebook goofballs working 12 jobs to pay off the debt from 3.5 semesters and they're thinkin' "you know, sellin' crack on street corners t'aint that bad."
ReplyDeleteMy husband is getting his PhD from Capella (which, as I understand it, is the least loathsome of the for-profit colleges). Obviously he's not in a position to notice the enrollment statistics, but if you want to talk about quality of student, OH BOY do we have stories.
ReplyDeleteI've seen some work by Capella "students." Unbelievably subpar.
ReplyDeleteSnarky, does your husband expect to market that Ph.D.? Because it's not a credible one in the least, and Ph.Ds from even the best places are not that saleable. Is he in a niche field that only Capella trains for? Or what?
Capella frightens me in that they don't have (or at least didn't, two years ago) a human research committee/review board and yet encourage people to do research on humans for diss projects, including children. So there's folks out there experimenting on kids with no review and no informed consent because, well, nobody cares about that. Ugh.
ReplyDelete@ MLP
ReplyDeleteI don't know from where you got your information. When I had direct knowledge of Capella's programs (2000 - 2006) they most certainly DID have IRB and it was taken very seriously. (It is difficult to believe they decided to dismantle it as it would be commensurate with tearing up their accreditation.)
@ F & T
So you've seen "some" work from Capella students and you are able to declare the entire university "sub-par"? Isn't that the sort of logical fallacy that we regularly skewer on these pages?
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As someone who has studied and taught in both conventional AND distance programs, I find it curious that CMers scream long and loud about the lack of quality/integrity of conventional programs but now that the discussion has veered to distance programs -- oh, they REALLY suck.
There is a cavernous gulf between the Capellas and the Waldens (and the distance programs of virtually every conventional uni) and the University of Phoenix and ITT Tech type programs.
I just reviewed two dissertation proposals from a distance program. They were substantive, significant, and impressive.
Have I also seen some work that makes my teeth itch and my eyes bleed? Yes ... but that happened during my time teaching in a public and a private high schools and later in public and private colleges. The only consistent phenomenon across samples was that there were a small pocket of engaged and gifted students; a small pocket of utter dullards; and a massive, muddling middle ground.
There are quality issues pervasive throughout the academy. Let's avoid scooping up the baby with the bathwater.
I work for some online schools. What kind of insight are you looking for?
ReplyDeleteThe schools are far from perfect. They are too expensive, for sure. At the same time, they do serve a purpose and a need. Many of my students work multiple jobs and/or are caring for family members -- they literally cannot attend traditional schools due to schedule constraints. I also have students who live in rural areas that are not served by CCs or universities. And finally, I do have students who are suffering from some kind of disability or illness that makes it so they do not want to go out in public. I do think they are paying too much, but I am glad they can still get an education.
I strive to provide a rigorous academic experience. I have never been asked to change a grade, and I usually finish the term with a normal bell curve. (I have never been asked to dumb down my assignments. I have been asked to give some considerations if a tornado or something has struck.) The other faculty members I know also strive to provide a good classroom environment. As we have seen in other posts, shitty professors are found at all levels.
The schools I work for provide a variety of resources -- educational resources, socialization resources, even very basic counseling services. Again, it's not perfect, by any means.
I do receive fewer classes now than when I first started working. The upper levels of admin are not very forthcoming, but I assume it is lower enrollment. The local CCs in my area also have a lower enrollment, though. We seem to have reached an education saturation point.
TL/DR: The online schools are not perfect but do serve a purpose. It is the most disgusting kind of privilege that sneers at them and the students who need to use them. We should all be working together to provide an excellent education for all students, both in terms of quality and cost. Incorporating online education must be a part of that.
Online for profit schools by and large shit, and everyone in academia knows this, including those that run the schools themselves. It's not like this is any big secret. I say "by and large" because I don't mean every single for-profit school. I just mean most of them. I can't say all because I've not done any research on all, but everything I've read on online for-profit universities (and I've done a lot of reading) suggests that they're a huge scam. Do YOU want a nurse educated at the University of Phoenix? I didn't think so. This is just a case of the pigeons coming home to roost.
ReplyDeleteJust go to the NYT and search "for profit universities" and you will find a veritable cornucopia of scams, whistle-blowers, federal and state accusations and lawsuits, and stories of incredible greed and callousness. Many of these for-profits are owned or largely owned by humungous corporations, like Goldman-Sachs, where profit is the bottom line.
These cases aren't limited to the University of Phoenix or Kaplan, either. Many different and varied for-profits have done some very dirty work. If there are a few good apples in the bunch, I'm not surprised. But the rest of the apples are bad.
If it were not for federal and state crackdowns on these scam schools, they'd still be employing the filthy practices that got them into trouble to begin with, and I have no doubt they're trying to get away with whatever they can, right as we speak.
I would be very happy if they all folded completely. Online courses are readily available at reputable universities. so it's not like distance learning is unavailable to people if they can't go to a bricks and mortar school.
@ Stella
ReplyDelete"Online courses are readily available at reputable universities. so it's not like distance learning is unavailable to people if they can't go to a bricks and mortar school."
And where do you think the impetus FOR online learning came?
It wasn't the brick-and-mortar schools.
> There are plenty of campus-based schools which are crap.
> There have been diploma mills pretty much since there have been diplomas.
> Online course delivery has been validated as a legitimate modality.
Given those realities, what, exactly, is your beef? Is it the profit motive? (Is Harvard broke?) Or is it not having to sit in a classroom at a certain time?
(FYI -- There are serious issues with nursing education in ALL VENUES. They started at proprietary (i.e. for-profit) hospital based nursing schools. Then to gain legitimacy, they branched out into the community colleges and four year schools (BSN). Oh, but now you can hop-skip and jump to Advanced Practice Nurse (e.g. Master's level nurse practitioner). But wait, now the NEW credential to be a nurse practitioner is the Doctor of Nursing Practice ... offered by some of the big name campus based schools. You might want to hitch your wagon to another profession.)
Legislation was passed about 6 months ago sharply decreasing the opportunity for lying and pressuring students at these for-profit schools, sponsored by Dick Dirbin (D-IL) and someone else whose name escapes me. He was ridiculed briefly at my online school #1 but then taken really fucking seriously. My numbers have dropped hugely but suddenly they are improving every single one of my classes. I think it's a good thing overall.
ReplyDelete@AcadMonk
ReplyDeleteThis is what I don't get.
I agree 100% -- the high pressure commission based ENROLLMENT "counselors" -- gave all for-profits a HUGE black eye.
But on the other side of the gate, the faculty and, by and large, the students were trying to create a valid and valuable educational experience.
So, why does this "ALL online/distance/for-profit education sucks" get perpetuated?
For my money, I'd much rather have a for-profit distance delivered graduate degree in practically ANY discipline than a not-for-profit, campus-delivered education degree.
Snarky, I said the work I'd seen was subpar. Not Capella per se, but then again, students do represent their institutions when they send work out to journals. It's not unreasonable to think they are training and mentoring their graduate students terribly if the kind of stuff I've seen ever gets onto an editor's desk. It should not; it embarrasses the school.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that in many academic disciplines a Ph.D. from an online university is completely laughable--unless it's a specialty field that only Capella does well. Even students with Ph.D.s from second- and third-tier institutions have a very hard time being taken seriously on the market, sad to say. I cannot imagine paying for a Ph.D. unless it's in an applied field where lots of money will come back to me, or unless I had no interest whatsoever in using the Ph.D. to gain employment in academe. That's not "disgusting privilege sneering" at students -- it's the reality of the job market for Ph.D.s.
And my beef is not with online education, but with for-profit education, which I consider a contradiction in terms. Sorry. Call it snobbery if you will, but I think the profit motive and education tend to mix very badly.
I apologize if there's any mistake about Capella...
ReplyDeleteA few years back I got to "tutor" (read: be outside reader but not get credit) someone who was working on their dissertation for that school. I immediately freaked the heck out when I found out that their committee had not asked them to get IRB approval for an experimental teaching style that was being applied to one class, but not another, of grade school students. The students were also to be interviewed by the researcher.
The writer had no idea what IRB was, had never even thought that informed consent was necessary, and when I made her search the website looking for information we couldn't find any (admittedly, she may have needed to be logged in or something, but still....)
If you believe they have an IRB I'm sure you're right--but why would a committee let this sort of thing go on? I was appalled and set her up with some forms post haste but... and I said this too much in my past position... that really wasn't my job.
@LMP
ReplyDeleteI am left wondering from your description if your experience was with Capella's school of education.
See my previous comment of disdain about education degrees/programs.
My experience was with a different school in the university which most certainly had an IRB and no one was permitted to proceed to any sort of human participant research without IRB approval.
(My university log-in still works and I just visited their the site of their Office of Research & Scholarship. Emblazoned on that page is a link to their IRB blog and a list of IRB meeting dates. )
Sadly, my sense is that your experience wasn't unique to Capella, but pathetically endemic to education schools.