For-Profit Colleges: Part 1

Today, we take a look at a graphic, published by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, that demonstrates the gross inequality present in higher education. Since it was published in July 2013, many articles have risen talking about the increase in Latinx college enrollment and African-American college enrollment. However, these statistics, which are seemingly promising, require closer scrutiny.

When examining the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce's graphic we see that despite surface gains in Latinx college enrollment, 72% account for enrollment in open-access schools, and only 13% for most selective schools. Similarly, for African-Americans, 68% of new college enrollments have gone to open-access schools, and only 9% have gone to the most selective schools. As for whites, a total of 82% enrolled at most selective schools.

Examining this graphic is critical since, as the Center states, "white students are increasingly concentrated today, relative to population share, in the nation's 468 most well-funded, selective four-year colleges and universities while African-American and Hispanic students are more and more concentrated in the 3,250 least well-funded, open-access, two- and four-year colleges."

This post is not meant to shame those who attend open-access two and four year colleges whatsoever. However, this post is meant to criticize and examine exactly why, and how, such a large percentage of new college enrollments for students of color go to these institutions.

As it were, I remembered talking to my cousin, just a few years older than me, about the school she attended. She had enrolled at a for-profit college, not too far from her home, for a short amount of time and now owed them thousands of dollars, thousands she could not afford to pay. This college was conveniently positioned in an area with a high concentration of low-income Latinxs with little education. We continued to talk and she told me about how simple the enrollment test was and how she was never taught anything.

Sidenote: This is not to be in favor of standardized tests that keep people out of systems of higher education but this is a critique on how they are used to poster an aura of selectivity to poor students of color, and cheat them out of vital educational resources and training.

After the conversation I had with my cousin, I looked up these for-profit colleges online. I was still attending community college then and remembered how often I saw advertisements for these schools around campus. Following my quick google search, I recognized how dangerous these advertisements on campus really were. Plenty of articles and threads came up discussing how these schools failed students, having flaky professors, learning from textbooks, and having no job-related support. This led me to an NPR article, which published that for these institutions,"the target population tends to be predominantly low-income and minorities. [They] visited homeless shelters where for-profit colleges were seeking students. They've also looked for students very aggressively through active-duty military whose tuition is paid by the Defense Department and war veterans whose tuition is paid by the GI Bill."

Aside from their aggressive recruitment, the problem with these for-profit colleges is that their graduates "fare little better on the job market than job seekers with high school degrees; their diplomas, that is, are a net loss, offering essentially the same grim job prospects as if they had never gone to college, plus a lifetime debt sentence."

Thus further emphasizing that for those that do attend, their degrees hold little value, especially when compared to the cost of the education. For example, a Medical Assistant program at Heald College in Fresno, California costs $22, 275, compared to Fresno City College's program which costs $1,650. These outrageous prices, with little to no market value, end up helping low-income students the least and benefitting for-profit colleges the most. Approximately 96% of students at these colleges have to take out loans to pay for their education at these for-profit colleges, which accounts for about 86% of the revenue of for-profits.

However, several online communities have emerged, documenting their experiences with these colleges. One, in particular, is called www.myittexperience.com, and hosts complaints against ITT Technical Institute, one of the most visible for-profit colleges. This site provides reviews for students and is also a space where its former students and teachers discuss lawsuits and air other grievances. Online communities such as these provide an important space for students who have been exploited by the for-profit college system. 

Stay tuned for Part II.