Free market fail:
Enrollment at for-profit colleges has “plunged” in recent months, by more than 45 percent in some cases, the Wall Street Journal reports, as the empty promise of these “subprime schools” comes to light to potential students.
Of course the real problem here is all those public universities distorting the marketplace with their promises of taxpayer subsidized education. If government would just get out of the education business and focus on its core mission of bombing brown people abroad and imprisoning them here at home, the market would make the most efficient use of our resources, educating the broadest number of people at the lowest possible cost. Because that’s what markets do.
Everything worth doing can be done for a profit!
If Federal jobs stopped accepting shitty for-profit Masters their profits would continue to drop through the floor.
Also, the federal government is taking legal action against these organizations for lax admissions standards, using incentive compensation for admissions staff (recruiters), etc. So, I just read an article (I’ll be darned if I can find the link) about how the colleges are being much more circumspect in their recruiting practices, which has affected enrollment.
For profit is not the same as non-government. Lots of excellent non-profit private schools out there, which is a pretty uniquely American thing.
Y’all’s clothes must be all crisp and pressed, ’cause today is irony day at The Stranger!
😀
For-profit colleges going under as people figure out that what they are selling is worth substantially less than what they charge is a free market success.
Like I’ve said before, think twice before you enroll in a college that promises you a great career through an ad on a bus with a nationwide toll free number.
@5: What’s ironic here? I don’t understand.
@4: “For profit is not the same as non-government. Lots of excellent non-profit private schools out there, which is a pretty uniquely American thing.”
There are very few excellent for-profit private schools as compared to the vast number Kaplans and Art Institues and University of Phoenixes.
@8 Um, the point I was making was that the issue is really profit vs. non-profit not government vs. non-government. There are lots of excellent *non-profit* private universities. Goldy sort of missed that entire category in his post.
@ 8 – Goldy’s last two sentences?
Proprietary colleges have always been suspect by people in the financial aid field. When you price your tuition and fees to exactly match the maximum amount of loans and grants a person might receive in a year….it is a sure sign that the institution does not have a student’s best interest at heart.
Please get rid of those college in pj’s adds. Those are worse than seeing some University of Phoenix or whatever add on the side of a bus.
@13 Students actually show up to class in pj’s at Western Washington University. Ugh.
I went to a great private school and got a great education. The difference was this: it was a NON PROFIT school.
Besides, aren’t these for-profits just sucking on government grant money/loans? Shut ’em down and watch the federal expenditures drop!