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At $51,400 as of November 2009, Trinity College in Connecticut…

… is the ninth most expensive institution of higher learning in America. UD has visited its beautiful verdant campus, full of smart preppy students and excellent teacher/scholars.

Trinity gave Steven Pearlstein, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the Washington Post, the sophisticated literacy, the social polish, the cultural knowledge, and the personal contacts to launch a successful, high-profile, and lucrative career. UD‘s guessing that this sort of future is what Pearlstein, and his family, wanted for him when, as an eighteen-year-old, he began to consider what college to attend. They rightly figured that the expense of Trinity was worth it for the quality of understanding and the depth of experience it could give him.

But that was Steven Pearlstein. For the rest of America, as Pearlstein writes in his defense of for-profit universities, the for-profit approach is good enough.

There is no reason that these cost-effective new ways of teaching and learning [the almost-exclusive use of online technology by the for-profits, that is] couldn’t be used effectively at traditional universities other than that they would disrupt just about everything — routines, hierarchies, to say nothing of the incomes and job security of the tenured faculty. That pretty much explains why the higher education establishment has been reluctant to embrace new technology and methods. The usual explanation is that education is not a commodity, that the process of learning and teaching is too nuanced, that the quality will suffer.

Put aside the fact that the for-profits are not at all cost-effective — they cost a fortune, much more than community colleges offering similar courses — and focus rather on the curious and specific high-handedness of Pearlstein’s approach to the for-profit problem.

He begins his defense by noting that Kaplan, a big shady for-profit educational outfit, is part of the Washington Post Co., but that “we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with it.” It’s just back there somewhere, generating way-impressive profits for the newspaper (Pearlstein, a business writer, might ask himself how Kaplan can do that if its tuition is so low), but we don’t dirty our hands with it… He spends no time in his opinion piece doing what you’d expect him to do — to reckon, at least initially, with his own in-house for-profit scandal.

Indeed the Post newsroom has everything to do with Kaplan, since it is part of their corporation, and its ethical lapses are tarnishing the Post by association. Not only that, but Pearlstein’s salary and job at the sinking Post depend, presumably, on Kaplan staying afloat. There is a conflict of interest here that should have been addressed. You wouldn’t want to look as though you’re rushing to the defense of for-profits because your newspaper’s already shaky value is now much shakier in the wake of the congressional investigations of for-profits. (Kaplan was one of the fifteen big offenders in the GAO’s investigation.)

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The for-profit university industry in general is one Pearlstein has chosen to have nothing with which to do, although it was certainly up and running when he went to college. (I don’t know if he has children, or how old they are. If they’re college age, are they at Phoenix?) He and his family went to enormous expense to put themselves among the hierarchies, tenured faculty, and nuanced learning of Trinity College.

Yet now Pearlstein condemns the world of the Trinities as “the establishment,” thick with tenured elitists grasping at privileges.

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Tenure, as Timothy Burke notes, is decidedly on its way out at American universities. And most universities, including Berkeley, are busy onlining themselves.

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I mean, go ahead and defend the for-profits. Attack the non-profits. This blog attacks the non-profits all the time.

But better not to do it via hauteur and hypocrisy.

Margaret Soltan, August 11, 2010 1:00AM
Posted in: the university

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6 Responses to “At $51,400 as of November 2009, Trinity College in Connecticut…”

  1. Beltway Boy Says:

    Pearlstein’s kids went to Ivy League schools (Princeton and Dartmouth, I believe). This is not a secret — he’s talked about it in public presentations, complaining all the time about the cost and lack of financial aid. When asked why he didn’t practice what he preaches (or screeches, more like it) his rather unconvincing response was something along the lines of, “that’s what my kids really wanted and I didn’t want to crush their dreams.”

  2. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Since he raised them to have the wrong dreams, he should take the fall and pay the tuition graciously.

  3. theprofessor Says:

    One of my Gilligan colleagues is a Trinity grad. Let’s compare him and Pearlstein:

    -sophisticated literacy–yes
    -social polish–no, as his long-suffering spouse would attest
    -cultural knowledge–yes
    -personal contacts–no
    -successful (mostly), high-profile (no), and lucrative (ha-ha!) career

    I think that Trinity did more for him than DeVry would have, though.

  4. Brad Says:

    It’s not clear from your blog, but Trinity College is non-profit. You can find it in guidestar.org.

    There’s several differences between the non-profits and for-profits. Basically a non-profit, over the long haul, has to make money. It’s just they don’t call it profit, they call it “surplus.” So, you could say they are for-surplus.

    For-surplus organizations have to provide tax information to the Federal government, just like for-profits. For-surplus organizations just don’t pay taxes. The form they fill out is called the 990. If you register at guidestar.org (free), you can download 990s to your heart’s content.

    The 990s list the 5 highest-paid individuals in the company. It’s this feature that provides the greatest information and humor for me. Trinity College has professors of this and that as the highest paid people. George Washington University has a football coach, the Dean, and the medical school Dean.

  5. Dom Says:

    The term “for-profit education” isn’t quite accurate when applied to things like Kaplan. Tennis lessons might be “for-profit education,” but DeVry and Full Sail and such are really just “for-profit credentialing” institutions.

    I know a few people who have become involved in these online courses. None of them give me the sense that they are learning something, not even in the way that tennis or guitar lessons would teach. They just struggle through their assignments toward a degree, which they hope will make better jobs available.

    Also, Pearlstein writes: “Because there is so little use of nationalized tests of knowledge or skills, it is not possible to know what, if anything, is actually learned.” Bull. It’s very obvious when someone has been taught a subject wrong, or not at all.

  6. theprofessor Says:

    Brad has done a public service by mentioning Guidestar. 990s are highly recommended reading. A few years ago, when I quoted chapter and verse from one of our tax forms, a miffed trustee asked how I got the info. She was shocked that they were publicly available.

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