Federal Student Aid Requirements At For-Profit Colleges Overhauled 295
An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Department of Education has released a proposal for new regulations that would hold colleges that receive federal student aid accountable for the employment success of their graduates. The overhaul is prompted by the fact that students from for-profit colleges account for nearly 50% of all loan defaults yet only account for about 13% of the total higher education population. '[O]f the for-profit gainful employment programs the Department could analyze and which could be affected by [the proposed regulations], the majority--72%--produced graduates who on average earned less than high school dropouts.'"
Sounds Wonderful (Score:5, Informative)
While this sounds like posturing that would never actually get passed, I really I hope I am wrong. I went to the University of Phoenix because I was working full time and night program CS degrees at real schools simply did not exist 5 years ago. I knew then that I would only pay for the degree if I was planning on getting a Masters degree at a real school right after. I even called two local schools to ensure they would admit graduate students with UoP undergrad degrees. (BTW, I am in my last semester of my Masters program now)
My UoP degree definitely helped with my career, but only because I was an experienced software developer long before I enrolled. It only helped because of ridiculous HR requirements for applicants with degrees only. The education was atrocious. My second semester database class consisted of just these four assignments: 1) Create a Database, 2) Create a Table, 3) Create Foreign Key Relationships, 4) Load Data into the Tables, 5) Create a Report. They even gave us the commands so all we needed to do was paste them into the console. This may be the most egregious example of the poor curriculum I can think of, but the rest of it was almost as bad.
My fellow students who didn't already know the material were struggling to understand it with no help in sight. I would help them on the forums and over emails, but I knew they would never get the necessary instruction to ever get hired in this field, let alone keep any job they weaseled their way into. It was really sad that they were spending potentially over $50k for a worthless degree. I never said anything to them because I did not want to risk being kicked out after spending so much money.
I hope the government really does start to do something. This problem was primarily caused by real universities that do not offer sufficient night programs for adult students, but it has progressed to the point where government intervention is necessary. These online schools really could provide decent educations if they were forced to. If their programs were decent they would fill a very large void in our country's education system, but in their current form they are nothing more than a parasite.
Re:Wrong target (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sounds Wonderful (Score:3, Informative)
Re:There is a goose to that gander (Score:4, Informative)
First you must ask yourself the question: What is the purpose of the public education system?
If it's purpose is education, then yeah, it's not doing so well. But if you look at the history it was created in the first place in large part to store children someplace out of the way while the adults were busy working, at about the time that child-labor started being outlawed. And it does pretty well at that, as well as indoctrinating students to obey authority even when the authority is ignorant and arbitrary, which I think we can all agree is convenient for those calling the shots in the wider world.
Re: Maybe... (Score:2, Informative)
Who's even going to see the application. These days most of the applications are thrown out by screening software before HR even sees a single one. Then they throw out most of the rest and only hand a small number over to the people that wind up doing the interviews.
It's all well and good for folks like the GP to suggest self education, but realistically even if you have a somewhat non-standard degree or one that's in slightly the wrong field it can result in having the application never seen by somebody that might be interested. I know my Dad lost out on a job and when he got it the next year the manager specifically stated that he would have hired him if he'd seen the application.
People don't really get that the resume and application are to get an interview, but if they're never seen by anybody, you won't get the interview.