… you can hear Tom Harkin being very indignant indeed about the scummy for-profit schools of America.
“A very sick industry.”
Harkin seems particularly scandalized by the involvement of hedge fund people in these schools. Someone should show him who’s running Brown University. And Yeshiva University.
…Hm. He seems to be under the impression that online is the poor white trash of education… He’s scathing on the subject.
I seem to be live-blogging this.
Can’t remember the exact number, but Harkin also seemed struck by the fact that the prez of some for-profit university or other made, what, fourteen billion times what the prez of Harvard makes. Something like that. Thirteen billion…
Ooh. Richard Durbin’s pissed too. For-profits rip off veterans, too. Veterans default and the schools don’t teach them shit. “How can it be fair for this kind of exploitation to continue?…. This is an absolutely unexplainable, indefensible situation!”
Harkin: “Used to be fifty percent of your students had to be campus-based. That ended in 2005. Now you’ve got the entire student body online! And look at the online dropout rates!”
Harkin: “These days a semester’s anything you want it to be. Some of these schools have semesters that are five weeks long! Keep ’em just long enough to be able to keep the money!”
Harkin: “Their mission is to grow and get profits at the expense of students… It’s the obligation of us here to provide effective government oversight and regulation… Are taxpayers dollars being used effectively?… I have grave doubts that these schools are a good taxpayer investment.”
December 14th, 2010 at 6:14PM
A shame that Craig (Five Year Party) Brandon didn’t publish his list of subprime party schools, which might have offered a first approximation to the misuse of tax funds by state colleges and universities as dropout factories.