Kaplan [has a] sprawling network of for-profit “universities”…

Scathing Online Schoolmarm dislikes quotation marks, but these work.

[The Washington Post, whose parent company owns Kaplan, is now] in the business of profiting off of lower-income students who pay for diplomas, often obtained via online classes… [C]orruption and abuses … pervade the for-profit education industry in general and Kaplan in particular (saddling poor people with debt in exchange for nothing of real value).

Since Kaplan gets virtually all of its money from federal dollars, it’s got to suck up to the government. Greenwald points out that this need doesn’t do much for claims of journalistic independence:

How can a company which is almost wholly dependent upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. Government possibly be expected to serve as a journalistic “watchdog” over that same Government? The very idea is absurd.

Alaska and Hawaii – already among the nation’s friendliest diploma mill states – are set to become the go-to places for the for-profit schools to set up business too.

More and more states, appalled by the scummy, exploitative methods of the for-profit tax siphons, are passing restrictive laws against them (UD‘s proud to say that her home state of Maryland has been one of the first to do this). As the list grows to include almost every state (forget waiting for the federal government to do anything), watch for Hawaii and Alaska to be the two hold-outs, corruption in those states being beyond your ability to imagine it so don’t try.

And watch, therefore, as all of the for-profits rush to those states to set up business — in close proximity to their diploma mill cousins.

In an editorial, the Sacramento Bee states the obvious truth about tax-siphoning, student-exploiting for-profit schools. The editors agree with the California Student Aid Commission that “the state [should] not give Cal Grants to students at for-profit colleges unless those colleges use some of their profits to provide student aid.”

The commission also called for denying grants to students at schools that fail to graduate sufficient numbers of students and whose students have an unacceptably high rate of default on student loans.

…generates scathing responses from readers.

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And speaking of scathing: The author links to a recent study of online education. Excerpts:

Students in the online courses were significantly better prepared at the outset … [H]owever, students in the online course performed more poorly than those in the face to face course…. Students who took developmental math and English courses online were much less likely to subsequently succeed in college level math and English. … [C]olleges that are focused on improving student success should proceed cautiously in expanding online course offerings.

The study’s author, Shanna Smith Jaggars, notes the pathetic lost-in-cyberspace nature of the online experience. One student says: “I didn’t feel like there was an instructor presence… I didn’t feel like there was anything I was learning from the instructor. The instructor was simply there as a Web administrator or as a grader.”
(Longtime readers know that UD calls online professors air traffic controllers.) Other student comments: “[I was] sort of on this island, all by myself.” “Alone and adrift.” “I know nothing about these people!”

Online would be a great way to study Samuel Beckett’s plays. It allows you to feel his theme.

Oh, and:

Online communication can be easily misinterpreted, due in part to the lack of visual and facial cues. Online teachers are encouraged to provide timely and detailed feedback. However … they often do not have any information about how the student responds to this feedback. In fact, students may misinterpret a high level of feedback as negative feedback when in reality a teacher is merely posing questions to stimulate student thinking.

Yeah funny thing about that. Online interaction ain’t really interaction, is it? Interaction means back and forth, doesn’t it?

Since a number of studies show these results, one researcher concludes that, for instance, “[t]eaching economics courses online in community colleges is probably not good policy.”

Here’s what the NYT columnist should have said in defense of online education, for-profit or not for profit. It’s really cheap.

Lalala … to be sure…

Huh? … Fuck off…

So far this is what Columbia University, and its president, have managed by way of response to the scandal of Lee Bollinger remaining on the board of the company that owns one of the most notorious for-profit universities, Kaplan. It’s the same high-handed indifference Bollinger (and, equally notoriously, Berkeley’s Richard Blum) has shown toward the hundreds of thousands of ordinary American grunts being dragged into and ripped off by the schools.

All praise, then, to the students at Columbia for raising a stink about this. They’re eloquent on the subject of Bollinger’s hypocrisy, and they’re trying hard to get him to resign from the board.

The CU Democrats’ petition says that “Kaplan exploits the poor, the vulnerable, and the taxpayer to enrich itself.” As of Monday night, the petition had over 580 signers, some of whom are alumni.

A Veterans Affairs writer warns GIs.

Go to Google and search for “GI Bill schools.” The first link you get isn’t a page run by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The first result is GIBill.com, and it uses the name of the most recognized public education program in existence to its financial benefit. It appears to be a legitimate site for information, but a cursory search of its privacy policy shows it is owned by an online marketing firm that, according to a major business publication, specializes in directing students to for-profit schools through its page. It’s a questionable marketing strategy that seeks to legitimize a page that serves little purpose other than to funnel student Veterans and convince them their options for education are limited to their advertisers.

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Update: Tom Ricks.

[The 2012] budget proposes no changes to traditional Pell grants, which are currently at their highest level ever. What it does is halt, after just two years, a program launched in the 2009-2010 school year that allowed students to apply for a whole second Pell grant for summer school or if they took extra credits.

That program turned out to cost 10 times more than expected, and there was no evidence it was helping anyone graduate from college faster. Instead, it appeared to be the case that for-profit colleges were gaming the system to encourage students to apply for the additional grants to take academically questionable courses.

The tax-profiteers play their games and ruin a good program.

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Update: Trash talk.

… from an insider.

[T]he leaders of [for-profit] companies, schools, and departments do not typically see their main function as furthering the education of students and their success; some do things that put finances over learning, and that’s when trouble, the media, and politicians strike.

… Those who work at not-for-profit colleges generally cannot get monetary bonuses for doing their jobs and are certainly not stockholders with a personal stake in the schools’ quarterly earnings. They get a promotion or a raise for doing a good job but not a separate check, and their admissions officers do not get cash bonuses.

Mike Shields, a retired Marine Corps colonel and human resources director for U.S. field operations at Schindler Elevator Corp., rejects about 50 military candidates each year for the company’s management development program because their graduate degrees come from online for-profits, he said in an interview. Schindler Elevator is the North American operating entity of Schindler Holding AG in Hergiswil, Switzerland, the world’s second-largest elevator maker. “We don’t even consider them,” Shields said.

This sort of outcome makes paying your loans back difficult.

… hit.

But with boosters like “Papa Doc” Bob Barr in their corner, they’ll be fine.

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Update: Nice and concise: “[T]he explosion in for-profit schools over the past two decades has created an environment in which schools whose primary purpose is to make money for their stock-holders sign students up for federal student loans, then turn huge profits while giving their students such a lousy education that when they graduate they can’t get a job and end up defaulting on the loans.”

For value investors, there’s no funner game!

… universities, we should remind ourselves that there’s a whole other world of legitimate education out there, one which students are more and more ably defending.

Here, in an opinion piece titled Fordham Rightly Resists Offering Online Classes, a Fordham student gets it said. His writing’s a bit awkward, but he gets it said. Excerpts:

… The foundations on which Jesuit universities, particularly Fordham, have been built upon are not in accordance with online courses. Though it may be convenient for students, it does not provide the degree of education we are paying for. The realm of learning and studying is completely altered under these conditions, with a less hands on approach.

If Fordham were to offer online courses, its credibility in teaching would be strongly questioned. Even if a student was able to get beyond the idea of no personal interaction with professors and no thought-provoking ideas of classmates, there is still no guarantee that the quality of education in the online classes will be up to par with that which Fordham instills.

… Sure, online classes can reach a larger amount [should be number] of people, especially those looking to attend part time. This, however, compromises the integrity of the order devoted to education by lacking a creation of relationships and the true development of the whole person that cura personalis stands on…

Serious, legitimate education isn’t just for Jesuits.

Steven Salzberg, a University of Maryland bioinformatics professor, writes with admirable frankness about the for-profits in Forbes:

… [For-profit universities] offer low-quality, almost worthless degrees. They have virtually no academic standards. They will accept anyone who can pay, and they seem to care primarily about the bottom line. They also haven’t addressed (and virtually never mention) the elephant in the room: many online students are probably cheating to pass their courses, which aren’t very demanding in the first place…

[We should] immediately stop offering government-funded student loans to FPUs. If they really have a better model for higher education, then let them prove it in the free market, without subsidies.

… it’s about good actors and bad actors.

… continues. Tomorrow, Senate hearings on deceptive and illegal student recruiting practices in the industry resume. IHE provides, in this and other articles, a good deal of background, as well as links to important documents.

Undercover investigators posing as students found that employees at all 15 for-profit colleges visited for the [GAO] investigations made “deceptive or otherwise questionable statements” to students about accreditation, graduation rates, employment outcomes, program costs or financial aid.

At four institutions visited, admissions or financial aid officials encouraged students to submit fraudulent financial information in order to qualify for federal aid, the GAO says in its report.

UD’s been covering the scandal for years. In ’07, she wrote a fight song for the University of Phoenix.

Sing it out!

To the tune of Rawhide!!

Enrollin’ …rollin’ …rollin’ …

Keep movin’, movin’, movin’,
Though they’re disapprovin’,
Keep them students movin’, Phoenix!
Don’t try to educate ‘em,
Just rope and throw and bait ‘em,
Soon we’ll be living high and wide.

Boy, my head’s calculatin’
My paycheck will be waitin’,
Be waiting at the end of my pitch.

Move ‘em on, head ‘em up,
Head ‘em up, move ‘em out,
Move ‘em on, head ‘em out, Phoenix!
Set ‘em out, ride ‘em in
Ride ‘em in, let ‘em out,
Cut ‘em out, ride ‘em in, PHOENIX!