← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Nothing like having your tax dollars go to massive advertising budgets…

… designed to rope naive people in to taking over-priced courses at lousy schools. If you like the idea of subsidizing for-profit colleges as they engage in their scandalous recruiting practices, read no further.

The rest of us should find it pretty heartening that a bill just introduced in Congress “would prohibit colleges of all kinds from using dollars from federal student assistance programs, including the GI Bill, to pay for advertising and recruiting.”

A sponsor of the bill, Tom Harkin, “emphasized the proposal would leave schools free to advertise — just from a separate pot of money that hasn’t come from taxpayers.”

*********************************

And, you know, we’ve been lectured endlessly by the for-profits about letting markets work… So I guess they’re okay with this? Free market, that’s what they’re about, not like the wimpy non-profits! One look at for-profit management compensation will tell you the free market’s working just fine for them. The prez of Harvard makes like, what, around a million dollars. It’s typical for heads of for-profit colleges to make ten million or more. Some of them make much more.

But no – they’re pissed about the legislation! Not only should practically all of their revenue come from the government (not much of a free market model when you think about it, huh?), but they should be free to do fuck-all with our money.

Margaret Soltan, April 20, 2012 7:03AM
Posted in: hoax

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=35600

One Response to “Nothing like having your tax dollars go to massive advertising budgets…”

  1. theprofessor Says:

    Personally, I would applaud if our state universities no longer used my tax dollars, federal or state, to purchase billboard space, TV advertising, run direct mail campaigns, pay admissions counselors to recruit students, etc.

    Then again, I suspect that unlike Sen Harkin, the administrations at both the for-profits and the state colleges know what the word “fungible” means.

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories