Is the rise of for-profit colleges in the United States a good thing for the American people? You know, the ones that advertise heavily and are often located in malls or office buildings (like the University of Phoenix)? That's the basic question this book attempts to answer.
The author of this book is Chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc, the parent company of a for-profit university, Kaplan University. As you might expect, he makes a case that colleges such as the one he runs ARE good for the country; that they make education accessible to non-traditional students at less overall cost, and make a big contribution to the national goal of a more educated population. The students they attract are typically lower-income, older people who may be working full-time and have spouses and children, whose focus is on getting a better job with more pay. Rosen says colleges like Kaplan deliver, providing the kind of skills that employers are looking for.
I found this book to be very well written and remarkably balanced in its presentation, and I learned some things I didn't realize about how American institutions of higher learning are financed. Even with the exorbitant tuition charged today, these payments are just a small part of the real cost. I didn't realize how much of the funding for public colleges comes from the government, directly, not just through student loans...and how fragile this funding can be. During hard times, when more people turn to educational institutions to improve their job skills, these colleges often have fewer slots for new students.
The heavily endowed, high-prestige private universities don't worry about whether they can take more students. They only want the cream of the crop of young people just coming out of high school. They compete for these students on the amenities and attractions of their ivy-covered campuses. They can tap their wealthy alumni for money to build these "extras." It hadn't occurred to me that wealthy graduates of these places could donate money to build football stadiums and get a tax-write-off! Or that traditional colleges have turned into resorts, with fancy restaurants, luxury dorms, professional gyms and silly extras like rock-climbing walls!
The author tells us that students who come from wealthier families where it is simply expected that their children will go to college are called "Automatics." Universities basically compete for these students, and not just by offering a top-notch education. They also offer a full-blown luxurious "college experience" for those families who can spend as much as $50,000 per year to give their offspring "the best." These students are at four-year resorts, funded by wealthy parents!
I guess this part of his narrative hit me hard, because in my own case, I was anything but "automatic" in terms of going to college. My father worked in a factory and had a sixth grade education; he always said, "Girls don't need an education" because we would just get married and have husbands to take care of us. Ok, I have to admit that I am retired now, so my Dad said these things back in the 1950s. He was wrong then and it would be even more egregious today to think there is anyone who doesn't need to learn skills that will enable them to earn a living. My sister was so smart, she was always at the top of her class, but when she got to high school, my parents pulled her out of her algebra and chemistry classes and insisted she take typing and shorthand instead (for those of you too young to know about "shorthand," this was a speed writing skill once used by secretaries, a desired occupation for young ladies). Both my sister and I managed to get college degrees anyhow. My sister, who has a PhD, recently retired from the University of Arizona where she was a full professor.
As for me, I investigated colleges on my own (the Catholic school I attended did not have counselors) and earned a scholarship to Wayne State University in Detroit. I did not attend the first year though because of lack of support at home. I didn't know how I would manage in the big city, so I instead attended Flint Junior College (we lived in Flint, where my Dad worked at Buick) and worked as a waitress. I had excellent teachers there and the next year I had myself together a bit better and moved to Detroit to take that tuition scholarship to WSU. I continued waiting tables to earn living expenses and enjoyed my years in the gritty urban environment of midtown Detroit. I liked it so much I stayed, got married to David who was also a WSU student and built a career as a writer.
The author is correct in pointing out that people like me, who were not on a track for college, still need to learn to make a living. Some (like me) would also like to have an education. It is not just the wealthy who are curious about many things and want to know more about philosophy, history, science... all the stuff that "educated" people are expected to know about. It strikes me that the focused learning provided by places like Kaplan makes a lot of sense for getting a better job, but there is still the lure of knowledge for its own sake. For-profit colleges provide skills training in a more efficient and cost-effective manner than pursuing the "college experience" at those ivy-covered places. They do not use tenured professors, but rather hire teachers who stick to a standard course content. They are much more active in measuring whether the student is "getting" the material, and are more likely to use online training that can be paced to the student's needs.
In a for-profit college, the student pays the whole cost of his education, but most require student loans to afford the cost. The author acknowledges that community colleges are cheaper, but he says the students who choose a for-profit college like Kaplan or University of Phoenix are attracted to the more convenient hours (to accommodate those with jobs) and the greater availability of the classes they need (whereas at the community college, there are usually more students wanting a class than can take it). Main-line colleges, whether private or public, actually count their selectivity (i.e., turning down a large percentage of those who apply) on the positive side of the ledger, while the for-profits recruit students and try to accommodate everyone who wants to attend with the classes and hours they want. They are centered on serving students.
The author walks us through many types of institutions of higher learning and he tells us there have been a few disruptive times in the history of American higher learning. One was the land-grant university that today serves so many Americans, and he thinks another is the rise of private, for-profit colleges. There is no doubt these new institutions are popular and I think it is for the reasons the author says. I once worked (at a Fortune 500 company) with a woman who had gone to U of Phoenix. We were both contract employees, working for the same boss. She had a blue-collar background, had been in the army, was married and had a couple kids. The perfect typical person who attends a for-profit school. She was also the very best data base expert in our group, with top-notch skills so valued by our boss that when her contract ended, he continued to employ her as a free-lancer to do work no one else did as well as she did.
I agree that there is a place in America for these new colleges, but I think the author overlooks what might be some important differences with a more traditional education. In many fields of study, facts are simply indisputable facts. This is especially true in technical fields, where learning step-by-step online is very effective. In my career, I both used this type of training and prepared training materials. It works!
But in other fields of study, discussion of different theories and points of view can be very valuable. Some of this discussion happens in the lunch rooms or hallways of academia. I'm not going to put on a defense of the spoiled rich kids attending "Resort U" - I have no idea if they ever talk about anything more challenging than who is doing what on reality TV or the latest hot fashions, and I am frankly appalled at the idea that these young people, who have no responsibility for paying for anything or doing any honest labor, are tomorrow's leaders! (After all, they're the one with the Ivy League degrees.) But I know when I was hanging around Wayne State, we had plenty of talk about what was right and wrong with America and who we thought should lead us and what kind of world we wanted to live in.
The skills I developed that let me earn $50/hour as a technical writer were not learned in college. The jobs I had in my later years that paid well did not even exist when I was in college. The author is right to tell us that more Americans need to be educated, but he says little about an important source of education: Self-education! People are capable of learning a lot on their own, especially when motivated. My husband and I got involved in early software and went on to sell an early word processing program worldwide (and we wrote a book about it (
Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution). David was self-taught as a programmer (everyone was, in those days) and I adapted the writing skills I had developed as a free-lance writer to technical writing, and embarked on a successful career. We taught ourselves these skills.
The Internet is full of resources for learning, and there are many free courses online. There are TED talks and MIT's whole catalog of classes.
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