Can For-Profit Tech Colleges Be Trusted? 557
snydeq found a story questioning "the quality of education on offer at institutions such as University of Phoenix, DeVry, ITT Tech, and Kaplan in the wake of increasing scrutiny for alleged deceptive practices [PDF] that leave students in high debt for jobs that pay little. 'For-profit schools carry a stigma in some eyes because of their reputation for hard sales pitches, aggressive marketing tactics, and saddling students with big loans for dubious degrees or certificates,' Robert Scheier writes. 'Should IT pros looking to increase their skills, or people seeking to enter the IT profession, consider such for-profit schools? And should employers trust their graduates' skills?'"
yeah, I don't care about the school (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:as always depends on the person (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:as always depends on the person (Score:5, Interesting)
His degree allowed HR to "check the box" for college education and thus his manager was allowed to interview him and find out that he could be trained as well as tie his own shoes. The customers love him and he often finds very creative solutions to difficult problems. Had he not attended DeVry then he never would have made it past HR or, if he had gotten a job here, it would have been on the production floor.
Re:Non-Profit? (Score:4, Interesting)
THIS. Where are my mod points? The entire point of a college is to make money; even for state schools. This has become particularly bad in recent years where college has become less about higher learning and more about getting that piece of paper that shows that you payed and are now eligible to do anything beyond grunt work.
I, for one, welcome these "for profit" schools: They are like a parody of the existing system, showing how a diploma is really just about paying the money and playing the game. I am cautiously optimistic that the weakness of their 'shovelware' degrees will wake people up to the fact that every other institution is fundamentally the same.
White Collar Votech Schools (Score:4, Interesting)
Many years ago Vocational Technical schools churned out welders, plumbers, electricians, and all sorts of other skilled trades by the boatload. Not everyone was cut out to be a white collar employee, and so if you didn't go to college you could choose these schools to learn a trade and get the skills necessary to get a good job.
These programs have fallen by the wayside along with America's manufacturing. We don't need as many of those workers, so we don't train them.
There is a new economy though, an information economy. Yesterdays Professional Engineers are today's MCSE's and CCIE's designing information systems. These high end jobs still require a college education, as much for the non-technical (e.g. communications) skills as for their technical parts.
For each one of the architects of the information age there are hundreds of technicians. Just like a P.E. may have designed building built by a crew of 1,000 skilled workers in the past, today an information architect designs a data center built by hundreds. These "for profit colleges" specialize in associates (2 year) degrees with the tech skills necessary to fill these jobs. They tech the technical bits, but go really light on the reading, writing, and math skills that would actually give people the fundamentals; just like VoTech schools of old. The welder of old didn't need to know at a 14" beam was required for the weight load and how to calculate it, just how to lay down a perfect bead. The information tech of today doesn't need to know why there's a three layer switching fabric, just how to run Cat5 cables and test them.
Where the "for profit colleges" mislead people is they want them to think they are getting the same education as a 4 year traditional college. They are not. Look at the curriculum online or talk to people who have attended one. These institutions teach you how to do, not how to think.
Somehow it became stigmatized to have not attended college. Never mind that I've seen plenty of 6 figure skilled tradesmen, and seen plenty of 4 year college graduates struggle to get a $40k job. If these schools marketed themselves as VoTech they would be more honest, but no one would go. They are forced into marketing themselves as something they are not, and then folks are surprised, and disappointed with the output.
Re:as always depends on the person (Score:4, Interesting)
What has traditionally been the case is beyond this. ITT has been in trouble for at least 15 years because it appeared that they aggressively recruited students, encouraged the students to maximize student loans, without any regard to the ability of the student to enjoy any level of success in the program. It seems that University of Phoenix merely expanded this model of student loan harvesting from the technical school to the University. I am sure that ITT and U of Phoenix both provide a valuable educational experience. What I am not so sure of is if they should be allowed to use federal student loans to provide such services.
Here is the thing that I am sure is never told the incoming student at ITT or U of Phoenix or any of the private diploma mills. A federal student loan never goes away. The student has to pay it back. No bankruptcy, no forgiveness. And the loans are relatively high interests rates, which accrues always, even if one has a delay in payment. The 50K many of these instituions charge can easily become 100K. It is easy to argue that such institution exist solely to transfer money from the federal tax payers purse to the coffers of private corporations. I would not do so. I would only say that in a free market in which these private for-profit institutions are competing, why would we need a federal loan program if they were in fact providing value. Sure, for non profit school such things can keep things fair and allow all qualified students to get an education. But if we are not talking qualified student, and any student, I think the private market would make much more reliable decisions. At least the student would be able to declare bankruptcy, and institutions with a high rate of bankruptcies would not longer receive loans. The free market, in this case, would work.
Inaction is very expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
...and just showing up isn't good enough.
Most discussions about failure in education fails to note the student's own failure to DO THE WORK.
About 1/3rd of my students fail, not because I'm tough or the material is hard or whatever the usual excuses are - they fail because they just don't do the work! Online quizzes not even opened/started, online discussions not participated in, homework assignments not submitted (not even a "I'm confused" text file as I recommend)...I am very sensitive and responsive to even slight attempts at effort, but if they don't do anywhere close to enough work - and I mean if I gave a 100% on every assignment they did do it still wouldn't hit 60% for the course - then there is nothing anyone else can do for them.
If you are willing to do the work, you can get a fine education at any school at any price.
If you are not willing to do the work, you will fail and lose a lot of money in the process.
And yes, for-profit tech colleges can be trusted. If their product (education) sucked as bad as is implied by the question, they would soon fail because (hey, get this) they didn't do the work.
Re:No you cant (Score:4, Interesting)
~$3.6k/year was a decent trade.
Heck, my state's primary college would have only cost me $2k/semester, and they're so well known for genetics/law/CS/Computer-engineering that large portions of my in-state tuition was paid for by bio-engineering patents and second-semester freshmen computer engineers get contacted by Intel/AMD/IBM. Actually, my state uni has listed many years in top 10 world wide in several research and engineering fields.
Re:Non-Profit? (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.thinkprogress.org/2011/02/04/for-profits-data/ [thinkprogress.org]
* CEOs of for-profit colleges receive up to 26 times the amount of pay that the heads of traditional universities do.
* Many of the schools make up to ninety percent of their revenue from U.S. taxpayers, through the Pell Grants, Stafford Loans, and other federal assistance used by their students. 91.5 percent of Kaplan's revenue comes from the government, along with 88 percent revenue at the University of Phoenix.
* Just 11 percent of higher education students in the country attend for-profit schools, yet they account for 26 percent of federal student loans and 44 percent of student loan defaults.
Yes and No: As an Instructor (Score:4, Interesting)
While teaching at a nationwide chain of tech schools, I personally found the certificate programs to be of dubious value based on their high-cost, almost $14,000, and the mandated grading structure in which students that completed software guided "labs" and had daily attendance were mathematically incapable of receiving a failing grade. I also felt like admissions/recruitment staff overstated the value of the program, but that most students had more sober expectations than our marketing hype suggested.
(Note: I've found the actual degree track AS/AA or BA/BS or Masters programs to be of significantly higher quality. Granted, having gone to a large Midwestern university, I find the for-profit "college" experience to lack some of the extra-curricular qualities that I think heavily contribute to quality college education. Particularly at the AS/AA level, I find the career-ed (tech) coursework to be similar to accelerated CC offerings.)
While I felt the program was not in the interest of the student (and eventually resigned), I will admit that it did serve a population that would have been likely to fail in the community college environment. Additionally, it did give them minimal exposure to the industry that they would have otherwise had a difficult time getting. The most valuable service was career placement, in which most of them got jobs at very rudimentary scripted help desks, which could get them enough "experience" to get past the HR goons and maybe get some attention with vendor certs or good interviewing toward more hands-on tech gigs.
Granted, as I've sat on hiring boards, I would find the certificate alone to be of minimal value, and would identify more strongly with an untrained applicant who showed similar skills through self-education (e.g. repairing family computers, experimented with Linux, authored simple web pages) on the basis that self-education can be extremely valuable with a good on-the-job training program.
I try to make it a point to discourage college certifications (and to set realistic vendor certification expectations) and push the AS as being far more valuable to employers that also opens the door to 4 year schools should they decide to go. Most of the counselors at the for-profit or non-profit community colleges generally tend to encourage students to simply do whatever they've already chosen to do, which is usually certification as a low-hanging fruit, as most simply want to avoid the general education courses.
Unfortunately, the for-profit schools are doing a far better job of providing instruction of any quality that is often more ideal for working individuals. Working two jobs (FT programmer, PT instructor) and living fairly far from any university, has made me use University of Phoenix for my MBA program. As a student, compared to other peers taking programs in low-middle quality state-schools, I find UOP's offering to be comparable on content. That said, I do think that the accelerated nature does cause some topics to be handled superficially, and without proper self-motivation, promptly forgotten.
Re:as always depends on the person (Score:4, Interesting)
"otherwise we'll be like europe where if you don't do well on the high school tests they give you will never go to college and never have a chance to change your life in the future"
When I first moved to France, it was the season when test results were just coming out.
A major paper ran a story about 'What do do if your kid doesn't get into a Top 10 school?'
The answer: enroll them in an IT program, or ship them to America.
Kinda took the wind outta my sails a bit to read that what I'd considered a good career choice (Ok, I went to a Canadian school but still) was the second rate choice here. After spending two more years here, I've realized that it was only partly a jab. While it's true that IT careers are not typically highly regarded over here, it's also true that in both North America, and IT worldwide, your test scores are not considered a primary qualifier for success.
Re:ITT is too (Score:2, Interesting)
I taught a course in a program at ITT for one semester and I was disgusted. I wasn't allowed to set my own curriculum, I wasn't allowed to set my own standards for pass or fail. If a student did the assignments in the book that I was obligated to assign them then I had to pass them. I couldn't fail them if their work was sub standard. I could only fail them if they did the work. It was appalling.
To make things worse:
The curriculum was out of date and they wouldn't let me update it so I was forced to teach my students expired skills.
Students walked into a class that required programming skills (but wasn't supposed to teach them) and didn't even have a basic understanding of a conditional IF statement. I found myself teaching them programming concepts just to get them through the class.
There were really only two students in the class of 30 that had the chops to pass the course, but in the end I was forced to pass all of them.
The school made no attempt to teach them the ethics of the field. They were constantly handing in work that used material they'd stolen from online sources and had no idea what was wrong with that. If they tried to get away with that in the industry their companies would wind up sued into oblivion.
It was depressing.