for profit universities

[46zilzal]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601214&sid=aA2_FlVDs2Sk

FRONTLINE had a show last week about the growing number of many rip-off and con artists now moving into the educational arena promising what they cannot deliver. Many of these diploma mills provide nothing but false hope to unprepared individuals striving to improve their lot in life mostly at the expense of the large government insured school loans which they are not able to repay.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/?utm_campaign=homepage&utm_medium=proglist&utm_source=proglist

[Bettowin]

Check out how much money big universities have in their endowments. I don't think they pay taxes on the money the endowments earn?

1. Harvard University $26.0 billion
2. Yale University $16.0 billion
3. Princeton University $12.7 billion
4. Stanford University $12.0 billion
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology $8.0 billion
6. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor $6.0 billion
7. Columbia University $5.7 billion
8. University of Pennsylvania $5.6 billion
8. University of Texas-Austin $5.6 billion
10. University of Notre Dame $5.5 billion
11. Northwestern University $5.4 billion
12. University of Chicago $5.0 billion
13. Duke University $4.9 billion
14. Cornell University $4.5 billion
14. Emory University 4.5 billion
16. Texas A&M University $4.4 billion
17. Washington University-St Louis $4.2 billion
18. University of Virginia $4.1 billion
19. Rice University $3.6 billion
20. Dartmouth College $3.0 billion
21. Vanderbilt University $2.8 billion
22. University of Southern California $2.5 billion
23. University of California-Berkeley $2.3 billion
24. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities $2.2 billion
25. Brown University $2.0 billion
26. Johns Hopkins University $1.9 billion
26. New York University $1.9 billion
28. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill $1.8 billion
29. University of Pittsburgh $1.7 billion
29. University of California-Los Angeles $1.7 billion
31. California Institute of Technology $1.5 billion
31. Indiana University-Bloomington $1.5 billion
31. Ohio State University-Columbus $1.5 billion
31. Purdue University-West Lafayette $1.5 billion
35. Case Western Reserve University $1.4 billion
35. George Washington University $1.4 billion
37. Boston College $1.3 billion
37. Georgia Institute of Technology $1.3 billion
37. Pennsylvania State University-University Park $1.3 billion
40. University of Wisconsin-Madison $1.2 billion
41. Lehigh University $1.1 billion
41. Michigan State University $1.1 billion
41. Tufts University $1.1 billion
44. Wake Forest University $1.0 billion
45. Carnegie Mellon University $850 million
46. Georgetown University $800 million
46. Suracuse University $800 million
46. Tulane University $800 million
49. University of Miami $750 million
50. Brandeis University $700 million

[GameTheory]

The sad thing is how often the "real" universities are also total rip-offs...

[46zilzal]

The sad thing is how often the "real" universities are also total rip-offs...
In what context? They provide a standard of education,,,what the student gets out of that depends SOLELY on them, the recipient of that education.

[Robert Goren]

I remember the draft dodger colleges of the 60s. I knew a person got a degree from one. Worthless piece of paper for quite awhile. Now nobody knows or cares that it is not some defunct religious sponsored small college.;)

[Tom]

In what context? They provide a standard of education,,,what the student gets out of that depends SOLELY on them, the recipient of that education.

I think there are more morons out there with real degrees that with dummy ones. :lol:

[BluegrassProf]

I went to not one, but two schools on that list...undergraduate and graduate. And yes, I was well-funded, and well-tasked - that's where I did my work with DHS. :ThmbUp:

In what context? They provide a standard of education,,,what the student gets out of that depends SOLELY on them, the recipient of that education.In my experience, this statement is both true and false. Certainly, individual ambition and initiative plays a role, but take for example the ITT Tech commercials for degrees in criminal justice...giving potential students the idea that they can, for example, work in a forensics lab with an ITT degree borders on deviant. At best, it's unethical. Just as an example, colleagues of mine that work in forensic science have no less than three years of graduate school, and rarely are their degrees in CJ (tend to be biology, chemistry, physics, etc.). Sadly, none of those years spent toiling at ITT Tech. With the ITT CJ degree, you're probably going to go into something like police work, which ultimately often requires no bachelor's degree at all. But hey: at least you've got some pretty fabulous loan debt!

It's an issue of reputation, of faculty, and of content. But of course, that's neither here nor there...at the end of the day, naturally, for-profit and private schools are driven by one predominant thing: makin' mad moneyz.

Thing is, so are public schools. I know: I teach at one, and our top dogs looooove the scratch.

As much as faculty heart talking (and talking and talking) about social justice and fostering profound scholarship and all of that, it's lost in translation for those that write and deposit checks...at the end of the day, for many administrators, paychecks trump the need for pursuit of the social good. I'm fortunate in that I teach in a field chock full o' disgruntled former CJ system practitioners (read: realists), so we can calls 'em like we sees 'em.

Business is business. Do I think degrees/experiences from public universities are more valuable? Yes, I do, but only in that they draw superior faculty as a direct result of prestige...for the time being. Remains to be seen what'll happen as profit schools become larger and more numerous, and start offering hard-to-turn-down contracts (including office and lab space, grad student assistants, and maybe a yacht) for those same faculty...

[rastajenk]

I always think, when I hear a politician promise more $$ for higher ed loans, using the obligatory kids-->education-->future-->greatness appeal, that that money just passes straight to the educators so quickly the kids' ambitions and goals and realities are such a small part of the equation as to be of no importance at all. To me it's one of the biggest political lies out there; but who wants to argue against it's for the children?

Maybe zilzal and Frontline are right about diploma mills getting rich quick at the government's expense; probably are. But Btw's post shows the real players are hardly in need of a bailout, but that's all it is. The growth of tuition rates the last couple decades has dwarfed the increased rates of just about everything else, and nobody seems to care about why.

There could be incredible savings in re-examining the whole higher ed biz, but the status quo players have way too much to lose to let that happen. The obscene cost of higher ed has been one of my pet issue peeves. If universities were corporations and behaving this way, people would give 'em the Wall St. scorn, and the big O would be on a demonizing warpath. But it is not to be.

[Robert Goren]

We have one of these diploma mills in Lincoln. Most of the people who take classes there are little older than most college kids. A lot students drop out before graduating, but still have a good debt piled up. The ones who do graduate have a lot trouble getting a job in their field. While I would generally support the idea of going back to school, at certain age it does not mean you are going to get a good job. A new 50 year old computer science grad is going to have a heck of a time getting a job. JMO

[DRIVEWAY]

We have one of these diploma mills in Lincoln. Most of the people who take classes there are little older than most college kids. A lot students drop out before graduating, but still have a good debt piled up. The ones who do graduate have a lot trouble getting a job in their field. While I would generally support the idea of going back to school, at certain age it does not mean you are going to get a good job. A new 50 year old computer science grad is going to have a heck of a time getting a job. JMO

An experienced 50 year old computer science grad is going to have a heck of a time getting a job.

[Tom]

Do they offer a degree in obtaining public assistance?

[DRIVEWAY]

Do they offer a degree in obtaining public assistance?

Acorn Community College

[Tom]

Acorn Community College

:lol:....nearly choked on my baloney sandwhich!

[Robert Goren]

Do they offer a degree in obtaining public assistance?The Ivy League schools do. You major in banking.;)

[BluegrassProf]

I always think, when I hear a politician promise more $$ for higher ed loans, using the obligatory kids-->education-->future-->greatness appeal, that that money just passes straight to the educators so quickly the kids' ambitions and goals and realities are such a small part of the equation as to be of no importance at all. To me it's one of the biggest political lies out there; but who wants to argue against it's for the children?What really bothers me isn't so much the loan issue - there are lots of people who absolutely should be going to college and doing brilliant things in degree-requisite fields, but are unable to afford upward-creeping tuition costs...not that it's always deserved, or appropriate...and I certainly agree with your "WEHEARTKIDSPLZVOTENOW!" comment (NCLB, anyone?) - it's the pushpushpush for moremoremore college students, almost always at the sacrifice of what exactly the meaning (read: value) of that degree actually is.

The liberal push towards more college degrees is, at the end of the day, seriously damaging what it means to have a degree. They say, "we want degrees for more Americans than evar!" Standards are lowered to increase numbers, we start judging the quality of programs based on those numbers, and recruitment - quanitity over quality - becomes the absolute end-all...not retainment, and certainly not what completion of the degree actually means. It's a bit like the larger private law schools (Cooley, for example), that have virtually open enrollment: they get all of these new students from the bottom of the barrel, and when they quit or fail out after a semester, the school has made tens of thousands of dollars in tuition that's most definitely not refunded. Now, how ethical is that?

Personally, I argue for a push towards fewer college students. It'd remove this demand for recruitment and profit, and admission and graduation would, at the end of the day, mean something. It also translates to the job market, where degrees retain marketable value.

Doesn't seem like rocket science to me.

[JustRalph]

There is a Law School in Charlotte that was in business 7 yrs before anybody realized that they were not State Sanctioned or Accredited in any way. :lol:

They were sued by two students who had graduated and couldn't get a decent job. The investigation revealed that the school had 1.2 million dollars in loans that were being paid back per year........and they had helped get guaranteed government financing for the students. The State got involved and instead of shutting them down and prosecuting some people, they are helping the school gain accreditation so that 7 yrs worth of students will have degrees that will then be "bona fide" ............. A police officer I was riding with drove me by the building and that's how the subject came up. This place looked like a small older style Elementary school that had been half ass remodeled. I couldn't believe it. Last I heard the school was going to be bought by a local college if they could make the math work. Those guaranteed Government loans on the books will probably make somebody a bunch of money.