I went to a similar for-profit school in Minnesota who also similarly shut down last year.
I still feel like they get a bad rap. Was it overpriced? Probably. Did I learn a ton and have small class sizes. Absolutely. The instructors had all previously worked in the industry, and knew their topics very well.
On top of all that, after graduation their persistent pestering of "how many places did you apply to this week?" (surely to help their numbers) had a lot to do with me actually getting a job. I didn't want to let the lady that called me weekly down. It took a lot of persistence and interviewing but I finally got my foot firmly in the door about 6 months after graduation.
I've been gainfully employed in the industry for ten years, I'm debt free, and I'm happy. I'm thankful for my time there.
Just because you had a great experience does not negate the fact that for-profit college students, statistically, fare much worse.
A common pattern I have seen:
Person does terrible in high school, doesn't get into a good college because they don't have the drive or commitment to get good grades. They go to community college, and surprise, they again get terrible grades and stop going. After a while they want to go back to school, so they start looking into these for profit colleges that promise them everything. These colleges make it sound so much more appealing than community college, because, well, community college isn't trying to sell you a bullshit education. Anyways, these sales people will constantly pester you trying to get you to signup and take out huge loans because for some reason we think that it's ok to lend someone with terrible credit $50k+ in worthless education.
The end result is either them regretting their decision or trying to justify it with some bullshit about it being a good learning experience or something of the sort.
I have seen many people follow this exact path and I am glad to see these companies shutting down. You can get a much better education for cheaper at a community college.
The end result you describe isn't much different than a number of 4 year undergraduate degrees, PhDs or masters programs (all at "good" colleges).
The best advice I ever received was to not pursue a Ph.D. in philosophy.
It's wrong to think that departments at not-for-profit schools don't have a marketing incentive that is (at best) indifferent to the best interests of the student.
>The end result you describe isn't much different than a number of 4 year undergraduate degrees, PhDs or masters programs (all at "good" colleges).
The difference is that the percentage of people with that negative end result is MUCH higher. Looking at stats like the default rate for students at for-profits vs non-profits is one indicator.
>It's wrong to think that departments at not-for-profit schools don't have a marketing incentive that is (at best) indifferent to the best interests of the student.
There is definitely some truth in this. HOWEVER, a big difference is that in many cases the interests of the department and the student are more aligned at non-profits than for-profits. The most obvious example is completion/graduation rates. At least at the undergraduate and masters level, there is a strong incentive to select students that are LIKELY to graduate from the program. Bringing in woefully underprepared students who have little chance of finishing the degree seems to be strongly discouraged at the undergraduate and masters level. I cannot speak for the PhD level, since I have little experience in that area.
Contrast that with stories about MULTIPLE for-profit colleges going so far as to target the homeless for recruitment into their universities. In some cases they went so far as recruiting people who DID NOT OWN A COMPUTER to sign up for online degree programs. Since virtually all Americans (regardless of credit score) qualify for up to $20K in loans per year (with a cap of about $180K total), a students ability (or lack there of) to complete the program is irrelevant as long as the money keeps flowing in.
> At least at the undergraduate and masters level, there is a strong incentive to select students that are LIKELY to graduate from the program.
Is there? It affects their attrition rate, but I am not sure that is a big factor in which schools students choose. It seems to be based on things like facilities, "vibe", majors available, prestige, quality of education. A high attrition rate need not even suggest a low prestige or quality of education: in many graduate programs, almost the opposite is true.
I went to a very expensive private but nonprofit Christian school for undergrad. They accepted anyone, and their attrition rate was abysmally high (although the education quality was fine). The attrition rate didn't matter at all to their marketing, as parents sent their kids there for different reasons. In fact, those kids who dropped out after 1-2 years were big moneymakers, as they only took gen ed classes that are cheapest to staff.
For PhDs, attrition is much more discouraged, at least economically (I'm in bio), because PIs/advisors pick students with the understanding that their first 1-3 years they will be useless in research and only start "paying off" near the end. This is why at the higher-tier graduate schools, there is a big attrition at the general exam (1.5 years in) and it's very low afterwards. In lower-tier programs there is low attrition throughout. And of course, many grad programs pay stipends, so those programs lose money with no compensation if someone drops out. Very different incentive structure than programs where the student pays tuition.
a. A diploma from a public university carries a certain level of prestige, unlike a for-profit college diploma, which is more of a red flag when looking through resumes.
b. The cost of that diploma will be, on average, much higher from a for profit college. This issue gets compounded by the fact that people applying to these for-profit colleges are, on average, of lower income brackets and also going back to point A, those diplomas don't hold the same prestige. So you are charging poorer people more for something worth less.
As to your second point, go take a tour of a public university and then a for-profit university and you will see the difference between the application process. The for-profit university will feel like your joining a 24 hour fitness, both in the sleazy sales tactics and how much pressure they will put on you to sign up.
A third difference is that credits you earn from an accredited university are transferable, whereas those you earn from many of these degree mills aren't.
"It's wrong to think that departments at not-for-profit schools don't have a marketing incentive that is (at best) indifferent to the best interests of the student."
You're right, so let's start cutting off the federal loans spigot to them next.
Agree 1000%. We need to get back to where students can pay for their own education with a part-time job and graduate debt-free. If the loans are cut off, colleges will have to cut their administrative staff and go back to shitty dorms, vs the luxury apartments that kids are living in now.
Do those statistics adjust for the quality of incoming students? That is, would the same student do worse at a for-profit college than a usual university (taking into account expected costs and outcomes)?
You know that's an interesting thought. That its not the quality of the education, but the quality of the student. Similar to how prestigious schools do better just because they filter for better students.
This is the dark truth about education that no one likes to talk about. It's almost all about what happens in the home. What happens at school is irrelevant by comparison.
>Person does terrible in high school,doesn't get into a good college because they don't have the drive or commitment to get good grades.
That was me
>They go to community college
That was me
>surprise, they again get terrible grades and stop going
Nope, that was not me. I got a 4.0 in communnity college
>Anyways, these sales people will constantly pester you trying to get you to signup and take out huge loans because for some reason we think that it's ok to lend someone with terrible credit $50K+ in worthless education.
Essentially, that was also me. I was utterly convinced and sold that going to a high ranking university was the best thing for me
>The end result is either them regretting their decision or trying to justify it with some bullshit about it being a good learning experience or something of the sort.
Back to that being me again
>You can get a much better education for cheaper at a community college.
My community college education was mostly useless except for a few classes: 2 science classes (although one of the profs had a lawsuit with the school which affected our course quality), 1 course in calc, and 1 course in sociology/economics with a particularly good professor. A lot of the courses taught me either stuff I already knew, could learn easily with freely available resources online, or stuff that wasn't true or had no understandable merit.
TL;DR I didn't do my homework in high school. I got a job at a ski resort out of high school, then went to community college, got a 4.0, went to a high ranking university, ended up unemployed with a 50k+ education. Granted, I graduated during the recession, but this exact thing can happen to you if you are going to good universities as well.
I would rather have skipped community college and uni, spent the money on skiing in Switzerland and taught myself maths and programming while continuing to work in ski resorts and something that involved a summer hobby of mine like mountain biking, alpine hiking, long distance running or with video games.
I went to a community college too. I was told in the first few weeks, most of you will drop out, and not transfer. This tenured Ph.d was quite a jerk, but he was right.
I transferred to a four year university, and got that rediculious degree. I look back, and there was so much b.s., involved in getting that degree, I'm suprised I finished.
I finished because it was better than working full time. I had this beautiful, competitive girlfriend who I just couldn't be with anyone without a degree. I'll never forget the look on her face when she asked me, "How do you feel about getting a degree?" Honestly Ingrid(yes, unbelievable blond) it was a waste of time. In four years, I had maybe eight classes what I really felt were worth the money.
If I was to do it over again, I would have picked a degree I was interested in. I picked business administration . I thought it was the safe choice. I was wrong.
I went to graduate school for a year, and dropped out due to health problems, and I didn't believe the mantra they were spewing. I did pay back that 10 grand. I'm glad I payed it back because I need to file a chapter 7 soon.
(If anyone currently going to a community college reads this, hang in there. It will get depressing. Your buddies will fill your head with stories about epic parties at their school. Just finish those general education transfer courses. I actually had a great time in CC. In Anatony, and Physiology classes, I dated a lot. It was loaded with nursing students.)
Also, I have the feeling that a "great experience" is all relative.
I went to a public engineering school in France, for which the student has virtually nothing to pay, and could secure a job in ~ 2 months after graduation without trying very hard (I did an interview in two companies). I was debt free... all my life. I'm not even talking about a prestigious Grande École, just your random everyday engineering school, which you can find in pretty much every region (with often several different schools in big cities). An Engineering Degree is equivalent to a Master’s Degree, and especially well suited to work in ... engineering. There certainly also are private engineering schools, which some of them maybe are less selective or slightly more recognized, but they are monitored by the state in order for the diploma they deliver to have an official value, and they are still far less expensive than private schools in the USA.
Well, there also are unrecognized for-profit schools with unrecognized (officially) diploma, or even with funny teaching setups (students teach each others...) but I'm not sure they attract a lot of people. Given they tend to concentrate on only technical and practical stuff, its probably even less useful to go there nowadays.
To complete the picture, most people who follow higher education studies in France actually go to the Public University (and not engineering schools) and it is far less selective, so the attrition the first years is quite big - and also it can be less easy to find a job depending on the degree you get and your domain. However, the public university is also obviously virtually free for students (regardless of the prepared degree), and talented students also have usually no pb finding jobs (and at least no insane debt :)
I signed up for computer learning center the month they went bankrupt. After 3 weeks of classes, I showed up and they were wheeling furniture out the front door. Dodged a bullet, there.
Having also worked in a state's higher education commission, I can that for-profit colleges were consistently two to three times more expensive than publicly-funded 4-year universities, even when accounting for room and board (which for-profit colleges don't offer, as a rule). They also lost the ability to be disbursed student loan funds due to not meeting minimum employment rates among graduates.
There's a middle ground between your statement and the experience the fellow above had. I'd prefer a good community college with a career counselor that pushes you to make the necessary steps toward employment after graduation.
oh let us be honest here, graduation rates pretty much suck across the board at colleges and are nothing to be proud of. For profits just got to take the rap because they were easy to demagogue and a few cherry picked examples were truly bad.
I don't disagree that for-profit colleges get a bad rap, but I think it's deserved in the case of ITT Tech and Corinthian.
I think about the government handing out student loans to students who statistically won't be able to repay, and I'm OK with the DOE putting a stop to it. Taxpayers will ultimately be on the hook for these failed loans, and if they know which institutions are largely at fault then good on them for being proactive
"handing out student loans to students who statistically won't be able to repay, and I'm OK with the DOE putting a stop to it"
Right, but ot depends on the facts.
Were they just asked to put up reasonable collateral, foreseeable from what they delivered compared with their responsibilities by taking federal money? Or were they blindsided with an arbitrary number from the DOE that was intended to force them to shut down before they had a chance to save their business?
Probably a little (or a lot) of both. And we should be as wary of the latter as the former.
They were not asked to put up collateral because their education is worthless and students won't be able to repay. They were asked to put up collateral because the Department of Education didn't believe they would survive the multiple fraud investigations (securities as well as consumer fraud). I think that risk was reasonably high, so the collateral doesn't seem punitive.
> They were asked to put up collateral because the Department of Education didn't believe they would survive the multiple fraud investigations (securities as well as consumer fraud).
That's not entirely true. They were asked to put up collateral and then banned from accepting new federal-aid-dependent students because the DOE received word from ITT's accreditor that ITT's accreditation was at risk due to, among other issues, ITT's financial status.
Now, among the sources of the problems for ITT's financial status were the SEC and CFPB fraud lawsuits themselves, and, IIRC, changes in ITT business practices that were taken in response to those lawsuits. But the primary direct trigger for the DOE actions wasn't DOE's evaluation of ITT's financial status, but the risk that ITT's would lose its accreditation, which would make it ineligible to enroll any students accepting federal student aid (not just new students, but continuing students as well.)
In a nation of laws, the government should not take punative action until after allegations of fraud are settled in court.
Sometimes, to prevent further damage, a court may decide to freeze assets or prevent a certain activity while the case is worked out. But that's the job of a court, not an agency like the DOE.
I don't have a good answer for you, because what you said sounds rational, but their tactics were slimy and their immediate shuttering signals, in my opinion, that they had no legitimate shot without a seat in the government trough.
They've had plenty of time to fix their problems. They have to have known about the issues for some time now, so them not having a bunch of extra time given to them is nothing to be sad about.
So, if tax payers paying for something they're not getting value out of is of interest to you, what about the 600 billion (well over half) of federal discretionary spending that goes to "defense" which involves contracts that we're aware regularly goes over budget and time with no guarantee of success?
Even if you're fine with the amount we spend, the F35 is just one example of exactly what you're talking about, but in terms of defense instead of education. Should we cancel contracts to Lockheed Martin because of how they fail to deliver? Or perhaps consider that even wasted education spending is probably more productive than wasted defense spending?
It's clear that they deliver an education. The question is whether they then get the people who have an education a job, similar to how a fighter plane maker may make a plane, but it may not do its intended job well. I guess I just find it interesting how a lot less time is spent talking about taxpayer spending on wasted weapons, while the measly education budget gets scrutinized with a fine tooth comb.
While there may well be more bad (by whatever metric) for-profit colleges there are also bad non-profit colleges. And non-profit itself is a bit of misnomer. It is true that registered non-profits can't pay dividends to their shareholders, but they can and sometimes do pay exorbitant salaries to those that have control over them.
As the gainful employment rule[1] currently stands it exempts degree programs from public and private non-profit institutions. I'd rather see a uniform set of metrics and standards applied to all institutions eligible for student loans.
Be careful what you wish for. This would basically kill liberal arts programs and the idea of a well-rounded post-secondary education. The incentive would be to transform universities into job-training programs.
I know there is an ongoing debate about the worth of a liberal arts education in the modern economy, but there's something to be said about the traditional notion of education for education's sake, rather than as a mechanism to improve lifetime earnings.
Something should be done about the high cost of post-secondary education and the untenable burden it places on many students, but I disagree that the solution should be tied to job prospects.
The question is, why should tax payers subsidize liberal art programs with no job prospects? Giving student loans in exchange for getting an education that will increase their earning power makes sense. Not only will the loan be paid back, but the increased earning power will also increase the tax base. But someone graduating with $200k in student loans with a degree that will barely qualify them for a $35k per year job seems a lot more questionable.
If you take away the student loan subsidies then the cost of those liberal art programs will inevitably come down, or at least they will be restricted to just the people that can afford a house worth of tuition to study philosophy.
Taxpayers do this already: it's called grade school and high school. The public has an interest in an educated populace.
I'm not seeing any direct correlation between the cost of an education program and the earning power of graduates from the program, so in the absence of that evidence, I couldn't say with any confidence that tying subsidies to earning power will do much at all to bring program costs down.
If I were to guess, what's more likely to happen is these programs would be canceled wholesale at low-margin institutions, leading to an effect opposite that which you describe: liberal arts programs would be available only at the institutions where graduates are more likely to obtain well-paying jobs, meaning Ivy League and other prestigious (and expensive) institutions.
Simply limiting access to federal loans across the board, rather than subsidizing STEM/MBA degrees at the expense of liberal arts, would probably do much more to incentivize the reduction of post-secondary education costs without completely ditching the notion of a liberal education.
The way the formula works the average or median (whichever is higher) annual income can be lower for lower cost institutions. So for example, SUNY Binghamton University could pass the GE rule if it's graduates make at least $40,000/year. Likewise, Nassau Community College would need its graduates to secure $23,500/year jobs. They'd both be fine.
Where this rule would pinch would be high cost institution that nonetheless produce graduates that enter low paying jobs.
Taking your premise that society has an interest in an educated populace, and that includes people studying liberal arts at the tertiary level, does it have an interest in paying for the most expensive providers of that education?
I don't see it as subsidizing STEM at the expense of liberal arts. I see it as giving loans to people who are likely to use those loans to increase their earning power, and therefore have the ability to repay said loans. It doesn't have to be STEM specifically, there are well paying jobs outside of that as well.
What benefit does society get from having lots of graduates with $100 to $200k in student loans that they'll struggle to make payments on for the next 20 years? Education is perfectly fine, but if the goal is to encourage lots of people to study liberal arts for the sake of learning, then let's find a way to do that that doesn't cost $50k per year.
>>Taxpayers do this already: it's called grade school and high school. The public has an interest in an educated populace.
If society has an interest in an educated populace, then we should go ahead and make college free for everyone by funding it directly with taxpayer money, versus indirectly with student loans.
Where do you draw the line? Would you have the public subsidize an education in tarot reading? In duck duck goose? These are fine amusing hobbies, just as literature is a fine diversion, but the economic prospects of a skilled duck duck goose player are pretty grim, just as the economic prospects of a literature buff have become. Let people who want to explore their hobbies do so on their own dime without society suggesting to them that it's reasonable to take out a $100k loan to do so. Then they won't be wondering why they are unemployed and $100k in debt when they finish their studies.
Maybe the solution would be to inject liberal arts into every curriculum if the college wants access to subsidies.
Producing well-rounded citizens is very important for a functioning society, therefore, it makes lots of sense to create incentives to produce well-roundedness.
This should be a requirement, and my own liberal education is why I'm glad I have one of the very few B.A.'s in Computer Science that my university issued. I could have taken a B.Sc., with more sciences, more maths. Instead I took the B.A. with a greater focus on classes like literature, economics, philosophy, and political science.
Taking Calc III and a fourth science class is a lot less valuable to me both as a worker and as a citizen than any one of my economics courses. (To say nothing of my public speaking courses.)
I completely believe in the value of education for its own sake, but why does a liberal arts education need to be 4 years long? Couldn't we have a system where a student spends one intensive year focusing on liberal arts, and the rest of the time at university can be devoted to job training?
if everyone else in the same profession is granting themselves raises and hiring extra staff, the definition of 'reasonable' gets skewed to "this is how everyone is doing it". And... it doesn't happen overnight, but I'd bet staffing levels and pay scales are pretty out of whack compared to 30 years ago for university staff who basically do the same things as 30 years ago.
I believe that all schools should have partial liability for the defaults of their students. You make a good point that this heavy-handed regulation of schools by shutting them down can hurt a few people who may benefit from alternative schools.
If all schools were partially liable for loan defaults (say 50%), they would pay far more attention into creating programs that have good job prospects and less on programs that just sound good. They'd also have an incentive to charge a reasonable tuition instead of maximizing the cost based on what can be borrowed. And they would spend a great deal more effort on job placement after graduation. The government would not have to pick and choose what schools to close down.
I dont want my school hustling me down the likeliest path to become corporate cannon fodder at ABC Corp when I'm trying to build a startup. Not everyone goes to school to "get a job".
Then don't go to school and just start your startup.
This conversation is about government backed education loans. It's not clear why the US government should be issuing education loans at all, let alone issuing them to students who are very unlikely to pay them back. Or at least have their real income greatly curtailed for decades by loan payments.
If you just want to get an education for personal reasons, figure out how to pay for it on your own without relying on taxpayers.
Well, from some policy makers' point of view, having a substantial fraction of the citizenry owe the government tens of thousands of dollars it alone has the power to forgive might be a very appealing bit of leverage.
FWIW: I went to a "real" university (University of Minnesota) and hung-over professors / TAs in large lecture classes or their related lab sessions wasn't a surprising occurrence-- at least in the general classes that everyone was required to take.
I had a math professor freshman year that explicitly canceled a lecture due to him having a hangover. Honestly this seems like a relatively minor nit to pick, as there are far greater issues to be concerned with at all levels of higher education-- for profit or otherwise.
None of my professors for technology related classes ever did this, but they also had about 6 months of legitimate industry experience between them so caveat emptor with anybody who wants you to take out a loan to pay for their "education".
(Having said all of this, the slip of paper has still been worth more than it's weight in gold, for me.)
> I cancelled after one of the "professors" showed up hung over.
For the record, professors occasionally showing up hungover is by no means means confined to ITT. I went to a fairly good public university, and I had a few professors who came to an early-morning class obviously hungover once or twice (and 1 of them was a pretty good teacher). I'm quite sure the same thing sometimes happens at Ivy League schools as well.
it happens everywhere. at least they were honest. i went to a 'good' UC, literally one of the best schools in the entire world, like in the top 20 if you believe certain 'rankings'. some of my professors tried to schedule 6am exams (which is a fucking absurd time to be in class for a college kid) or just didn't show up, because they were doing consulting work on the side.
one of them was obviously banging the female students for grades. like, really obvious, so obvious that my naive 19 year old self could tell what was going on.
one time one of my professors showed up stoned and showed us pictures of sea turtles for 90 minutes. i couldn't even make that up if i tried. luckily, he was a good teacher and it had something tangentially to do with the class.
yet another professor quit the department (or was he fired?) and started a test prep company ... for the tests he used to give. apparently they just use the same shit over and over, so hey, why not.
all of that is relatively harmless compared to the wing-nut profs that are clearly pushing a political agenda in their coursework and grading, and have absolutely no qualms about punishing you academically for having dissenting opinions.
i don't know, college is kind of a scam all around. there's a lot of fuckery afoot. it's adults doing adult things, it's not high school anymore. having been through it, i know to not to put too much faith into a 'good school' on the resume. i've heard some stories from my friends who went to ivy's and other elite private schools along these lines too. it's endemic.
i think i never liked school because all of this horseshit goes on in industry, except you get paid to deal with it instead of paying to have the privilege of being shit on by professors.
I live with a person who works at a public university as a physics professor. He doesn't show up hung over, but he only puts in about an hour a work a week outside of class.
What I am trying to say is there is crap talent in every industry.
I went to community college and did well enough to get into a real university( University of Florida). The biggest shock of my life was that in most cases my community college teachers were superior to the processors at Florida.
Sounds like a lot of hit and miss with these schools. With the rise of bootcamps as well, I wonder - is there any organization / website / agency compiling and auditing a list of these types of schools? It'd be great to be able to say "I want to become a pipeline designer" and knowing with Better Business Bureau level of confidence that I was choosing a good training program.
Just clicked on the link. Seems to only do binary categorization of "accredited" and "not accredited". Would probably be more useful if they made available all of the data they collect as part of the accreditation process, to allow journalists, prospective students, etc. dig into the details.
DOE doesn't collect the kind of data you are probably thinking of as part of the accreditation process, because DOE doesn't do that. Accreditors do that, and DOE has a set of accreditors whose accreditation it accepts. DOE does provide the data it collects, which is the name and effective dates of the accreditors for institutional, special, and internship/residency accreditations for each institution. (It also provides links to the accreditors in many cases, and those sometimes provide publicly more of the data that they collect during accreditation.)
You remind me of their commercials; not that such a thing is bad, it just always seemed to me that some percentage of the people attending these schools must be having a positive experience.
Unfortunately, I think you're in the minority.
I also wonder how much their lack of success could be contributed to the kinds of people who have ITT as their most viable option. You might be able to better speak to this than I, but I've always kind of assumed ITT was a "last resort", where other institutions (community colleges, etc) would be better options if available.
The dream: take students who are mostly unprepared to succeed at college and educate & prepare them for success in the real world.
The reality: most of these students will not realize a return on the investment of their time and acquisition of a ton of debt that they cannot discharge in bankruptcy. Many will fail to attend class, fail to take notes, fail to do homework, fail to learn, and will not complete - but because they have already sunk huge costs into the endeavor, will continue incurring more costs in spite of the writing on the wall.
The economics means that these schools are unsustainable. However, some people find success through these schools. How can we continue to serve these people?
Perhaps we could avoid throwing the baby out with the bathwater by creating more community colleges, allowing more people to enroll in affordable community colleges, complete milestones at their own pace, while providing more direct subsidies of tuition for the truly needy. I agree that we would benefit from more German-style apprenticeship programs as well. For all of their worker protections, they still have incredibly low youth unemployment.
What's the case against community colleges historically? I graduated from university a while ago and still take a community college course from anything from math to photography when I have the time. I have been largely impressed by what they have to offer.
I have no idea, but our local community (junior) college is so highly regarded that our high schools generally recommended it as a good course for many, if not most, students. It routinely ranks in the top 5 of the AMATYC[1], and has transfer programs set up with many of the UC/CS colleges in state so you are guaranteed entry in those colleges if you complete the requirement classes with a certain GPA, regardless of high school performance (or completion!). Guaranteed transfer to UCLA or UC Berkeley as a science major at a fraction of the cost with half your college credits taken care of is nothing to sneeze at.
Santa Rosa Junior College[1]. I just looked up AMATYC rankings, and apparently they haven't placed since 2003-2004. I'm not sure if that's because of their math department degrading, or other colleges stepping up their game, or some failure at the state K12 level in supplying fundamentals (since the contest is based on student performance). It's possible my information is somewhat out of date (I went through there around 2000), but the first of my children will be making choices about colleges in a few years, and I was leaning towards recommending it (but haven't closely looked at it again recently).
From my experience at that time, it didn't feel significantly different than the campus I transferred to, except that the math classes at the Junior College were actually significantly harder, or at least more intense.
Ah, I still live there myself. A nice place to live if you can leverage something close to a SF payscale even though you're an hour north, as the housing cost is still relatively high compared to almost everywhere else in the country.
Community colleges with regional accreditation and freely transferable credits are not a problem. They serve several niches that large universities may find inconvenient or unprofitable--such as the hobbyist courses you mentioned, continuing education requirements, and remedial courses for students with inadequate high school education, and compete with some larger universities for the non-traditional students.
Spending some years at community college before transferring to a larger university's degree program is a great way for poorer students to save tuition money, and for academically unprepared students to catch up to their age cohort in a reasonable way. The disadvantage lies in the social networking, which is a big part of the value of (4 years of) on-campus university education. At a community college, it is somewhat less advantageous to make contacts with other students and professors, because they are less prestigious overall. Someone with an associate's degree is not as likely to help you get a job (at least for several years after graduation).
Most for-profit schools lack several of the elements I consider to be absolutely essential to qualify as a "community college". Many of them appear to be so horribly parasitic and exploitative that I can't figure out how they manage to get so many students.
When I was an undergrad, many years ago in my home state of Ohio, community colleges were definitely looked down on as being "lesser" than four-year universities, even if the universities were offering two-year Associates programs.
However, the State of Ohio overhauled how it helps funds state universities, where funds are allocated based on graduation rather than enrollment. As a result, state universities have started shifting more and more students to take low level courses at whatever community college, or colleges, they partner with. In particular, students with higher drop-out risk also get sent over to the community college.
I think that, along with many of the State's public universities slashing tuition on entry-level courses have helped improve the cost burden of higher education, particularly for those high-risk groups where they only take a few classes and fail to complete the program.
California community colleges are pretty affordable (with in-state tuition) and mostly pretty good, but not all states have a similar system: when I was in Wisconsin, community college was much closer to the cost of a four year school.
> What's the case against community colleges historically?
nothing, but they don't have slick advertising and promise you a $75k/year job, or aggressively recruit you by calling you non-stop and using manipulative pressure tactics like you're buying a $50,000 cell phone plan at a mall kiosk.
or aggressively recruit you by calling you non-stop and using manipulative pressure tactics
Wow, you just reminded me of something funny that happened about 15 years ago.
A younger friend of mine was interested in tech, and knew I was "good with computers". They had taken some online quiz, and said I should take it. So I took it, and filled out my info thinking I might win something (I was young, and didn't particularly care.) About 15 minutes later I got a phone call from a guy trying to tell me that I was in a dead end job, and that I would never be anything if I didn't go to the school he was pushing. I think I just laughed, and said something snarky like "at least I'm not calling people up selling things." Then about an hour later he called back from another number, and was making fun of my (admittedly awful) band, asking where he could buy tickets. I calmly just told him we would appreciate the support, and gave him our website. He just hung up in a huff, but it was a very weird exchange.
In any case, I am very surprised anybody ever buys anything from pushy salespeople. I always immediately equate it to a low quality product, or a business with questionable morals.
Never mind pushy. How do rude salespeople even exist?
I have never even liked the concept of a salesperson, as distinct from a vendor's point-of-sale clerk. I don't like to haggle; I check competitor prices, and use advertised sales or coupons.
> Never mind pushy. How do rude salespeople even exist?
They exist because people who give in to avoid conflict exist, so pushy and rude both, in certain contexts and with certain target audiences, work in sales.
If you've never sold its kind of hard to understand but doormats are people who have nothing to offer and who's time isn't valuable. Part of selling things to people is selling yourself. People with high value are allowed to be arrogant and rude , in moderation.
" I am very surprised anybody ever buys anything from pushy salespeople. "
Agreed. The irony is the majority of people do. Sadly, most people are irrational > 50% of the time. Sure. They are capable of being rational, but they don't exercise that capability.
My local one has cut back on everything in the last few years. No more counselors - just use the online tools! And they're mostly about getting federal financial aid. Placement consists mostly of 'apprentice' positions which means a vanload of students running the back end of a restaurant somewhere all summer and sharing an apartment meant for 2.
Strangely they don't advertise at all - at least in the media I see. While I saw IIT ads all the time. And they target the same demographic.
Community colleges have an inverse relationship with the economy - when the economy is in a slump they do well, when the economy is on the rebound their admissions go down. There's a bunch of reasons for this - people go to school when they're out of work, people who are going to school anyway may not think they can afford a "real" university when the economy looks ill.
Once the economy picks up people have jobs so they stop going, those who want to go to school feel good about their odds of taking on a ton of debt and go to a larger school.
(source: father was a professor at a vey large community college for ~40 years, mother is a prof at a university)
N=1 here, but I got no apparent utility from the existence of counselors in high school or college.
In retrospect they handled some registering paperwork for me, but they also planned my coursework for me as if I were the median student. In high school I had to press the counselor to let me take more AP courses than she thought was wise.
In college, it was more of a rubber stamp thing, where the counselor just approved my choices because they lined up with degree requirements.
Other than officially validating that my classes met the degree requirements, there was no value add. I'm glad to see someone at the helm realized a computer can do that just as well or better.
My high school counselors were actually reasonably helpful, mostly when it came to college advising stuff. I went to a small private HS though, and they knew everyone by the time you were a senior.
I had the same experience in college though. Heck, I'm an MSE student now and I don't even have an advisor because the one they assigned me left and I haven't been bothered to get a new one.
My high school counselor was incredibly useless, and quite possibly harmful. I also went to a small private high school (~30 students per grade level).
Her only focus, as far as I can tell, was to make sure we could be admitted to a UC. She spoke to us in 10th grade, letting us know that we needed to take three SAT II subject tests, and that two of them should be writing and math, while the third should be whatever we thought we'd get a high score in. She also stated that on no account should we schedule all three tests for the same day, because too much testing wears you out and your performance suffers.
I could tell that last bit was nonsense, but I believed the earlier advice and took the math, writing, and latin tests. The counselor bore a grudge against me from then on for ignoring her advice but still getting high scores. Come senior year, I learned that good schools usually required a science SAT II. Whoops.
I had almost no interaction with the school counselor besides the speech she gave to the 10th grade. I heard through the grapevine how upset she was that I'd flouted her non-individualized advice.
I had no "counselor" or similar role in college. The CS degree required a CS professor to sign off on my "plan", but that entire process consisted of me going to a professor in my final year, saying "I want to declare a CS major; here is my plan, all of the classes except that one are already complete", and getting a pro forma signature.
Several years ago De Anza College in Cupertino had an excellent array of in person classes (by CC standards). Too bad they are making a lot of those online, from what I remember seeing a few years ago (that also has issues with Gi Bill requirements that classes be in person).
I don't know that there is a "case" against them. My guess is that there are a bunch of mis-assumptions against them by proxy. I'm guessing but I think a chunk of people might think or suggest that the college prep education they pay their tax dollars for up with 12th grade is doing an inadequate job if community college or junior college is needed.
That and then there is a general "anti-university" sort of vibe in the world. "They waste a lot of time and money teaching you stuff that you don't need" or "it's just a piece of paper" where as maybe a vocational school might be a more "efficient" option for getting a job. I'm not expert but I believe a lot of community colleges try to offer college prep courses and try to help ease the transition, rather than just focus on vocational skills that can immediately be applied to a job.
I see more of a case against going to a four year college for a lot of people instead of just going to a much cheaper 2 year college for the first two years and transferring to get a 4 year degree. Most state four year colleges have a transfer program.
Honestly, even though this is harsh, I think your "the reality" description of for profit colleges applies to community colleges as well. Graduation rates at community college are very low (like 35%ish) and more than half of community college students need to take (and pay for) remedial classes before they even start earning credit.
They are comparatively affordable though and you aren't likely to go into crushing debt to go to community college, though it's possible, my uncle did it.
There was one of the "best" community colleges in the country in my hometown. Best ranked by, I have no idea, people in town just talked about how it's ranked high nationally. I took a few classes there the summers I spent in my hometown during my college years to speed up my university degree. The quality of classes and education was seriously lacking in the classes I took. They were not college level in my opinion (even though my credits had no problem transferring). Grades were posted online without names attached and it was shocking to me that half the class was struggling to pass such a basic class. These C community college students are not going to make it in a 4 year university if that's what they are aiming for.
My friend did get her LPN there though and seems like a good nurse so maybe it was ok for more "trade" type degrees.
Community college is not the answer to the kids flunking out of ITT tech. They won't do better in community college, they will just have comparatively less debt. Getting more kids in community college is certainly not the answer. More subsidies is even more not the answer.
> Community college is not the answer to the kids flunking out of ITT tech.
Who's trying to solve the problem of kids flunking out of ITT Tech? One of the problems with ITT Tech is that you can't flunk out of it.
> They won't do better in community college, they will just have comparatively less debt.
You seem to think that there's a problem with people doing badly at ITT Tech. The problem is that ITT Tech is bad, not that people are doing badly there. That people are saddled with a worthless qualification and are in crushing debt from the process of getting it is the problem.
> Getting more kids in community college is certainly not the answer.
To the question that nobody asked? No. To people ending up in horrible debt with a worthless credential? Of course it is. It would take you 4-5 years in community college to generate the debt that you can in a semester of one of these fake schools. Community colleges are fine. Some are great. I went from community college to university, and a ton of other people did with me, a few to Northwestern and the University of Chicago (I just went to UIC.) I'm sorry you didn't like yours, but you shouldn't judge all Chinese restaurants because the meal you had at the one in your hometown was too salty.
My experience is that there are plenty of community colleges, but people don't want to go to them because they feel they're stigmatized.
I have to admit that while I'm obviously against exploitative schemes, the shutdown of something that may have been a viable alternative to a traditional university hurts a little. Small trade schools, which ITT presented itself as even if it was in reality just a scam, are much better learning environments than large universities for most of the kind of stuff that hackers do.
I'm worried there will be a small cultural backlash against people without traditional educations on the heels of this shutdown. Since traditional university education is mostly just a massive, deeply-ingrained scam itself, this is disappointing.
That's not the dream. The dream is to get access to the billions of dollars the Federal Government spends to finance college degrees. Tuition costs at for-profit schools track neither those companies inputs nor the value they actually provide to the market.
The distinction is important. It is likely --- overwhelmingly likely, I think --- that there are programs with "the dream" you site that will work well. They just won't work like government-subsidized for-profit colleges.
They're actually quite a few apprenticeship programs here in the states. Learning a skilled trade just isn't sexy for a lot of kids and for some reason are looked down upon. Even though you can get a welding apprenticeship and be earning 70-80K right out of the gate.
High schools here are starting to encourage kids to take a more non-traditional route to a career and letting kids know there are other avenues other than 4 year colleges - including more vocational training, apprenticeships and other options like code camps.
The median pay for a welder is $38,000 per year. Only 10% earn more than $60,000 a year.
In other words, earning $70-80k "out of the gate" as you say, is rare. A person earning a median hourly income would need to work 3200 hours a year to make $70,000 (assuming 1.5x wage for all hours over 2000).
Roughnecks make $60-$80k in the oil industry. No idea what a welder makes, but I'm thinking it being a specialized skill, probably more. They often do work 70 hour weeks, as well. Not much else to do but work, drink or fight when far from home in a camp full of men.
Throw "underwater" in front of welder and you're looking at a couple factors of 6 digits.
Your last paragraph is spot on. Community Colleges (supported by MOOCs) and apprenticeship and trade school programs are the way to go.
3rd tier colleges with Ivy League prices aren't, and are only done based on misleading financial aid. I've seen a lot of resumes of people from for-profit schools. The graduates fall in 2 camps: Those who regret the decision, and those who don't realize how badly they were scammed.
90% of the time I see a title attached to someone's name ("Jane Smith, Phd" or "John Doe, MBA") it's from one of these overpriced degree factories, and it's a terribly negative signal.
It feels like non "for-profit" schools also suffer from the same reality, now that the prices are commonly hovering around 40K per year at smaller liberal arts schools.
I am personaly happy to see the hammer come down on these for-profit universities. I too feel for the students as I was one of the Corinthian Colleges students a few years ago at Everest University through one of the Florida campuses. My degree program was the A.S. in Computer Information Sciences -- such a waste. Look up the job placement rates for that program in 2010, just insane.
Thankfully I too have been able to take advantage of the Department of Education relief. But I have to go through the process of the “borrower defense to repayment”. It continues to be a tough process but at least it some form of relief for me.
I hope former ITT students are able to find a quick resoluton. This type of school shutdown is not easy on anyone.
On another note, I wonder if this is the start of the 'higher-ed debt bubble' that has been predicted for quite some time now...
Yes, I think this is the crux of all our education woes currently. I'd be curious to see how the system would evolve if the DOE eliminated the federal student aid program entirely.
Yes, and the reason that there were easy student loans for worthless education is because of laxity in the accreditation system on which reliance is placed to assure that education is not worthless, and because of a historical lack of accountability for frauds on the part of certain (particularly for-profit, who have the strongest incentive for fraud) institutions.
The recent issues at Corinthian and ITT (including the fraud lawsuits against both and the DOE pressure on accreditors, as well as the ultimately DOE action after the fraud lawsuits and accreditation issues at ITT) are a direct result of efforts to end "easy student loans for worthless education."
I believe the most common is ACICS. The fact that more attention was paid to it after Corinthian Colleges was how the process that led to this shutdown started in the first place.
You have my condolences. Corinthian Colleges was a client of a company I worked for. They were...not pleasant to deal with. The board meeting in which it was announced to our team that they were being fined into oblivion by the federal government was met with more laughter than sympathy.
Maybe we should have more of them. When they're not meeting the expectations of their students, the students go elsewhere and the school is forced to close.
Far cry from the current entrenched and inflexible education system.
How is the non-profit school system "inflexible"? You don't have to attend a major research university at all, let alone for your first several years worth of credit hours. There are more than 1,500 community colleges in the US, with flexible scheduling and costs per credit hour that are a fraction of major schools.
The marketing notion that the options are solely UCLA or ITT Tech is part of the problem with for-profit colleges!
And community colleges typically feed directly into the state school system, some of which (eg, SUNY) are very good and still very affordable.
There are a few legacy bits of the typical university which need changing (big lecture hall courses are pointless when you can just distribute video), but for the most part it's a solid system which is unlikely to be 'disrupted' by for-profit businesses.
Collage students are generally bad at working at a steady pace when given self directed classes they don't really like. So, having a specific time when lecture takes place even if it's just a video has merit.
In my mind, the ITTs of the world compete with community colleges for students. Are admissions requirements drastically different between the two types of schools? If not, why do people object to for-profit colleges?
It seems like there is little accountability in either community colleges or for-profit schools when it comes to accepting students. Both are incentivized to have as many students as possible regardless of eventual performance. But I'm not familiar with any fundamental differences between the two when it comes to admission standards or accountability.
EDIT: I see farther down where you comment regarding the non-transferability of credits at for-profit schools which is a huge difference. That seems to be a glaring hole in the for-profit industry that should be closed in order to get federal funding. But that probably opens an entirely different can of worms.
People object to some for-profit colleges because they're a scam. They (1) generally have very poor placement rates; (2) accept students very unlikely to succeed; and (3) exist largely to channel federal taxpayer subsidized loans to their shareholders in a manner detrimental to both the students and the taxpayers. ITT seems to have taken the further step of lying about job placement rates as the cherry on top.
The difference between community colleges (and I'm sure you can find at least one counterexample, but in general) is massive. First, CCs don't charge anywhere near as much money. eg in CA they charge approx $25-$50/credit hour. So even if the student doesn't succeed, the student isn't burdened with tens of thousands of dollars of debt. Community colleges have better to far better outcomes than bottom-feeders like ITT. CCs are accountable to the state and the credentialing boards.
> Are admissions requirements drastically different between the two types of schools? If not, why do people object to for-profit colleges?
ITT's troubles have nothing to do with admissions requirements, and everything to do with fraud (securities and otherwise). Their accreditation problem stemmed from business-viability problems stemming from the fraud lawsuits, and their problems with DOE stemmed from their accreditation problems.
Corinthian's problems similarly were rooted in fraud.
In both cases, the frauds included misrepresenting placement statistics in the context of both seeking admissions and, more critically in many respects, nontraditional student loan programs operated by the schools.
> It seems like there is little accountability in either community colleges or for-profit schools when it comes to accepting students.
Community Colleges are generally chartered with the purpose of the broadest possible access and low, taxpayer-subsidized tuition. Students aren't wracking up tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt a year at CCs,
and CCs aren't conducting massive marketing campaigns directed specifically at drawing in more people who "unable to see and plan well for future" (as internal documents showed Corinthian was doing.)
I don't know why you are focusing on admissions standards, when the difference in attention between for-profit institutions and public community colleges isn't focused around admissions stanadards.
Conceptually there is nothing wrong with a for-profit university or vocational training academy. The problem is when there is only profit and no (worthwhile) education or training.
I found this when doing my research for the borrower to defense repayment act when submitting to the Department of Education. I included a copy of this exact PDF with the URL in my application.
I'll preface this with my lack of any love for ITT, but there's a piece of the story that bothers me:
"Last month, the feds demanded the company produce an additional $153 million in collateral—nearly double its $78 million in cash on hand—to cover possible losses that the government might incur if the company were to suddenly fail."
Here's how that sounds to me: "Well, ITT technically hasn't done anything illegal. But we don't like them. How much cash do they have? Double that amount and tell them we need this much for 'collateral' or we shut them down."
Can anyone fill in the blanks that Bloomberg didn't? What basis does the government have to make such demands (as it appears to me) out of the blue? Why make such demands knowing going into it that it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy? (That last question is kind of rhetorical.)
> "Well, ITT technically hasn't done anything illegal. [...]"
The DOE action is based on a risk of business failure produced by fraud lawsuits by the SEC (for securities fraud) and CFPB (for consumer fraud) against ITT, both directly and because the costs and potential fundamental issues with ITTs then-existing business model revealed by those lawsuits also led to the risk of losing the accreditation from its accreditor.
(Incidentally, that's an accreditor whose notorious laxness in enforcing standards on private universities has led to the recommendation that it be no longer accepted as an accreditor by the Department of Education, a recommendation which may result in action this month removing it as an accreditor.)
The DOE action is based on a risk of business failure produced by fraud lawsuits by the SEC (for securities fraud) and CFPB (for consumer fraud) against ITT
ITT Tech received > 70% of it's revenue from federal student loans. As soon as their business plan became "take as much money from taxpayers as possible because we know our 'graduates' will never be able to pay this back" they opened themselves up to this.
> What basis does the government have to make such demands (as it appears to me) out of the blue?
The utilitarian argument is that the taxpayers should be secured against paying for useless education. I guarantee you schools like that are a net utility loss for the public and the government obviously doesn't like that.
My wife had worked as a temporary at ITT here in Calfornia. It was the most degrading work I have ever seen. She was teaching English courses, and 98% of the kids plagiarized, not even trying to cover it up. When she gave failing grades to the papers, the students fought back and the director at her location told her she can't do that. She quit that week.
I really feel for all the students who are so close to graduating and not knowing if they'll have anything to show for it.. And their credits will most likely not transfer to another school because of the different accreditations.
That their credits had virtually no chance of transferring to any other institution --- a point ITT was forced to make on its own website --- is a pretty good reason not to allow it to be the beneficiary of billions of dollars of public financing.
I've seen some discussion of letting credits transfer using something called Prior Learning Assessment, essentially having the student prove they've learned the material taught in various courses at the receiving institution.
Most schools will let you test out of pre-reqs if you get the right people on board. I've never heard of a school accepting prior learning as credit hours.
If that were the case anyone who figures out what they want to do and starts doing it in high-school would test out of a year or so worth of classes right off the bat. This would be particularly prevalent in STEM where there's a lot more test and "prove you know the material" based assessment compared to the humanities where there's more emphasis on producing a particular volume of work that meets a particular quality benchmark. Lots of STEM programs would be financially screwed if they couldn't bankroll themselves with huge freshman classes full of people who will change majors.
I got the ethics requirement for CS waved. I was a transfer student who had taken two semesters of business law, two security management courses, one class on computer and Internet specific law and crime and even then it was an uphill battle. After that they reworded the requirement to drop the "or take a series of comparable classes and obtain approval by the department" clause. My observation was that being as mostly dependent on tuition bred a "fight for every penny" attitude like you'd see in an insurance company which obviously caused a lot of inefficiency.
> If that were the case anyone who figures out what they want to do and starts doing it in high-school would test out of a year or so worth of classes right off the bat
Which is bad for the bottom line, but would be the disruption that higher ed needs. Face it, universities' USP is now being credentialing machines, learning can be done quicker and better from internet moocs/OCW/video lectures/tutorials.
Online/remote learning is a good alternative if you want to get an overview of a topic or expand your knowledge. However, I don't think that you can replace a proper scientific university degree just by online learning.
> Transfer of any sort tends to be tricky. You rarely get anything close to parity, particularly in core courses.
Depends on the school. I transfered from Northern Michigan University to University of Wisconsin, Green Bay. Most of my courses transferred and fulfilled most of my gen-ed requirements.
That's true - and as a taxpayer, I don't relish the idea of funding things like this that are taking advantage of people... but I have to admit I feel a little icky at the thought of pulling something that might act as a ladder of economic mobility - even for just a few people - out from under them. It's like we're saying to people that don't fit into the "traditional" mold of college-goer: "You can't go to ITT any more"... OK, but what do they take on to better their station now? I just can't think of a great anwser to that, other than bloviating about theories of "post-scarcity" that do nothing to help these people and it makes me feel bad.
ITT was anything but a ladder of economic mobility. It preyed on those people who most needed that mobility. The institutions you're squeamish about harming are community colleges, which have much cheaper tuitions and actually do educate students.
Yep, community colleges are where it's at. I started at a small local college a half-step up from a community college as it offered 4 year degrees. Got a year's worth of credits there to establish a good record and then transferred out to an ivy.
My brother got his 4 year degree from the same college, moved onto a master's at a bigger school and is doing quite well.
The problem with for-profit schools like ITT and Phoenix is clearer when you see those companies as a sustained effort to profit by delegitimizing community college.
I think that is maybe where my uncomfortable feeling comes from: community college seems like an "extension" of the grand idea of higher education (which is awesome for people that want that!)- become a more well-rounded person, read the classics, learn history and art appreciation, etc. etc. - it's what I did, and I enjoyed it... but I know I'm not everyone. I grew up in a very poor place where it might just serve people better to "learn the things you need to know to pass for XYZ 9-5 job" and from what I read ITT (sort of) fit the bill. I worry that we're saying "You can't do that - you have to go try and be a well-rounded renaissance man/woman"... now I know that with federal money, maybe we have the right to say it, but still...
Community colleges (at least the one's I've seen) tend to have both traditional academic programs intended to fill the lower division of a classical four-year college program and vocational programs leading to a two-year degree or vocational certificate (or where you might just take a few ad hoc classes for career advancement without enrolling in any kind of certificate/degree program.)
The idea that the ITTs of the world are more effective for vocational education than Community Colleges is a product of the massive marketing campaigns of ITT-style for-profit institutions more than any reality, as far as I can tell,
I went the community-college-then-university route as well. I got enough credits to get an associate's degree before transferring and was able to put that on my resume, which I feel got me some attention when I was applying for part-time programming jobs as I finished my bachelor's.
The fact that credits weren't transferable always seemed so shady to me. That just made it seemed that whatever credits you did earn weren't legitimate or worth anything if they couldn't be equated to credits at another college.
> Why didn't ITT seek accreditation so that credits were transferable?
Accreditation and transferability are different issues; ITT was accredited (were it not, it could not have participated in federal aid programs.)
> It seems like it would instantly increase the value of what they are selling.
Like Corinthian, what they were selling was largely fantasies, specifically targeted to demographics who were unlikely to recognize that they were fantasies. Were ITT intending to sell a legitimate education, sure, transferability would increase the value, but they were never going to sell legitimate education at the mass-market volume and premium prices they were trying to sell at.
The additional cost of meeting the accreditation requirements, and the accreditation fees and dues, would exceed the portion that could be monetized out of the additional value imbued to the product by virtue of earning the accreditation.
Naturally, I am assuming that a for-profit business made a rational cost-benefit analysis.
But it also could have been that they would rather have had countable cash in hand than nebulous goodwill some time in the future. Business managers don't always make rational decisions based on what is best for the business.
Credits rarely transfer into a major or minor program of study regardless of source institution. Waiving of requirements to opt into higher-level coursework is fine. That's rarely what students want.
ITT is just the worst example of crappy education. There are plenty of schools where a crappy education is still available. Federally backed (edit: guarenteed) money for student loans intuitively seems problematic.
I graduated with a BS degree in the UC system and many years later decided to get another in the CSU system and even then there were difficulty getting transfer credits for base classes to get the second degree.
> I really feel for all the students who are so close to graduating and not knowing if they'll have anything to show for it.. And their credits will most likely not transfer to another school because of the different accreditations.
I'm pretty sure the ones that graduated have no chance of their credits transferring either. Only difference is they saved whatever the last couple tuition payments would have been.
You can put an ITT Tech degree on a resume. It will be regarded as less than a degree elsewhere, but it's something. But just non-transferrable course credit gets you nowhere. These students may be put back years on their career path.
For IT degrees (bachelor and master) for those who cannot go to a "normal" college for four years, an option to consider is the online non-profit Western Governor's University [1]. It is especially interesting if you already know much of the material through work or self-study.
It was founded by several state governors about 20 years ago, and is accredited by The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.
It's pricing is interesting: $2890 per six-month term, regardless of how many classes you take or credits you earn during that term. If you want to take a heavy load to earn the degree faster and save money, you can.
Each degree program has a particular list of skills that you have to demonstrate competency in to earn the degree. They offer, of course, all the necessary classes to learn those skills, but you are not required to take those classes--you are just required to demonstrate the skills. If you have already acquired some of these skills elsewhere, you can take the test or do the project that demonstrates it and that will count toward the degree.
For most of the IT degrees you also earn several widely recognized third-party IT certifications, at no extra cost. For example the IT bachelor's program in network administration includes these certifications: MSCA Windows Server, CompTIA Linux+, CompTIA A+, CompTIA Network+, CompTIA Security+, and CompTIA Project+.
(The offer more than IT, BTW. The also have bachelor and master programs in teaching, business, and health).
"Free education" they say. "It will solve problems" they say. "Education will be better" they say.
No, it won't. Free education -- or subsidized loans -- puts a disconnect between education and its cost.
If the person paying is not the person deciding, a poor decision will be made. It's just like how HSAs prompt people to think about what they're spending their money on.
ITT would not exist but for government spending. Sure, some will beat the dead horse of more regulation. But the real answer is STOP SUBSIDIZING. Stop subsidizing education, stop subsidizing mortgages, stop subsidizing GM, stop blowing decisions sideways by removing the universal language of cost from the discussion.
Stop subsidizing education? Do you propose this for just higher education? Or is it all education you'd like taxpayers to stop paying for?
Unsubsidized education either a) means more private loans somehow now exempt from bankruptcy proceedings or b) education is now only for those that can afford it.
I am the complete and total opposite of your position. How it is that we provide 12-14 years of education for free, but then burden the economy with an insane amount of unsecured debt for the last four is insanity. It places our economy at risk, it severely stunts upward mobility, it burdens our youngest minds with mortgage-sized debts, and it sinks people into a lifetime of debt.
If college is, in general, required to actively participate in our society, it should be paid for the same as (Pre)K-12.
Edit: I'd like to say that I agree that subsidizing activity as a direct pass through of money from government to for-profit enterprise is a bad idea. Don't subsidize for-profit colleges. But they were never needed to begin with.
The average college grad makes something like a million dollars more over his lifetime than a non-college grad. If that last 4 years cost the most, I can see why.
Anyway, option B. Having a restaurant is only for those who can afford it. Owning a house is only for those who can afford it. Starting a start-up is only for those who can afford it.
Fortunately, we have a system that allows people to pay each of those costs over a period of time (in some cases, even over a lifetime, as you pointed out).
Maybe your restaurant goes under, or your house goes underwater, or your skills aren't valuable, or (however unlikely) your start-up fails. I don't know what to tell you. Reality's a bitch. Hopefully your research and efforts are enough for you to make the right decisions.
It's quite possible for a $20k education to produce a $1 million payoff. In that case, anyone can afford it. It's also possible for a $150k education to produce a $90k payoff. In that case, few can afford it
I'm not going to tell you what to do, pay for it, or take your earnings. You alone can make those decisions.
It looks like the main problem in this whole scheme is the government-funded student loan program. ITT was wrangling to get access that that loan money as a key to its operations. Failing to comply with the Dept of Ed's requirements caused them to go out of business, since they would no longer have a place at the public trough.
How many state schools and private colleges could survive without government largess? We've seen a massive increase in tuition costs, far beyond inflation in recent years. Such is the result of artificially boosting demand for college on the backs of the taxpayer.
As for forgiving ITT student loans, I say no. Students are responsible for their own loans and (bad) decisions. By that reasoning, shouldn't we just forgive all student debt for anyone who didn't get their dream job straight out of undergrad? What about those who don't finish school but still have loans? For everyone but the far left, these ideas are ludicrous. Let's not make the taxpayer suffer twice for the poor decisions of others.
> We've seen a massive increase in tuition costs, far beyond inflation in recent years. Such is the result of artificially boosting demand for college on the backs of the taxpayer.
There's nothing recent about it. Tuition has been rising far beyond on inflation going back to at least the 1920s. Take Stanford. For each decade here is the factor tuition actually rose from that of 10 years earlier divided by the factor it would have risen by if it had only risen by the inflation rate:
I've only worked this out for Stanford because they were the only school I was able to find tuition information on going back that far. It would be interesting to see numbers for other schools.
How many state schools and private colleges could survive without government largess?
The reason we have seen tuition rates go up at public schools is precisely because their share of taxpayer funding has been cut, they have to make up for the missing funds somehow. You'd wish they would rely less on tuition because then we could do without useless taught masters degrees and with less shiny amenities designed to compete for the tuition income.
Nowadays you see community colleges building dormitories! Neither the student body nor the taxpayer needs that kind of expense so the place can attract students from three counties away.
>The reason we have seen tuition rates go up at public schools is precisely because their share of taxpayer funding has been cut
I think it's a bit much to claim this as the sole or even main reason. Tuition has gone up because it can. People are willing to pay it because, who cares, it's just a loan. Not money out of pocket.
Federally sponsored programs UP $20 million from previous year. Local programs up more than $2 million. These more than offset state-level funding being down $6 million, and that $6 million is a drop in the bucket of $1.6 BILLION in operating revenues. Over $200 million increase in net worth in that year alone, and over $1 BILLION in net increase the year before.
Schools are not hurting for money. Tuition students pay is less than half of the money they make. Tuition does not go up because it needs to, it goes up because they want it to and because it can.
UT could make tuition and fees literally $0 for everyone and they'd still be profitable over the past two years.
Students can do as they always have done, rent a room somewhere nearby if they want to attend college X.
But if the local, not-famous C.C. just opened a set of dormitories while its offerings stay the same as in previous years it's clear that they are trying to cannibalize from the student body in the next few counties. And at the end of the day, it's only the building contractor that benefits.
I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with loan forgiveness, but to claim that going to college is a bad decision is really a poor choice of words.
Everyone you talk to everywhere says that "a college education is the path to a good job" and "college educated workers make - on average - n% more than their non-college-educated counterparts". When these people (kids really at 18) graduate from high school, they are making the best decision they can possibly make.
Yes, we know now that ITT was basically a diploma mill, but for a very long time ITT grads got good jobs in the tech industry.
Taking on the loans is the bad decision, in the case that the student is stuck with no career prospects and a mountain of debt.
> they are making the best decision they can possibly make
That is not true. Going to college is not the best decision for everyone. Many graduates are over-qualified for the jobs they end up taking. Many jobs that should not require a degree now can afford to filter applicants based on completing college, since so many more people are going.
Employers are basically using your years at school as a signal that you are a hard worker. Is that signal worth the time and cost?
I see that I may be straw-manning the argument here. You are focusing on the loan and I'm focusing on college attendance. Apologies.
I think that the decision to go to college should be more than "a college degree will get me a good job". It should take into account the degree, the amount of assumed debt, and the current job market for these degree holders. I'm not suggesting those be the only criteria, but they should be included. (Maybe they are - I don't know)
While I agree that I see no reason to forgive these loans as opposed to any other education loans, I just wanted to point out that the taxpayers would not be suffering twice in this case because the only "suffering" that the taxpayers endure is if loans are not paid back. If they are, the taxpayers get their money back plus interest (still in the hands of the government, but it's not "lost").
I absolutely think the government should forgive these students' loans. Arguably, it was the government's decision that rendered those loans useless. ITT Tech may have been a shoddy school, but it was still school.
I'm pretty sure he's referring to Illinois Institute of Technology (http://web.iit.edu), and the fact that the name confusion doesn't act in his favor. I didn't attend, but I've been on the campus and it seems like a pretty great school.
I can empathize a bit. I went to the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. It's an excellent school - on par with MIT in its eyes. The name recognition's not there where I live right now, though. It's not helped me find work.
I graduated from ITT 11 years ago. Care if I chime in?
* Why did I go? I was just out of high-school and I wanted to be a software engineer. I looked at the local university (Robert Morris in Pittsburgh, PA), but I didn't like their program. I was one of those kids who started tinkering with programming at 12 by making Pokemon fan sites :)
4 Years at a university studying a generic comp-sci degree didn't appeal to me. ITT offered a degree in Software Applications and Programming. It was what I was looking for.
* What did I study? As mentioned, Software Applications and Programming. Aside from the core classes (English, Calc, Trig, etc...) there were 2 OS classes, 2 VB, 2 C++, 2 Java, 2 webdev and 1 data structures class. at 18, this is what I was looking for. A few classes to teach me the basics in those areas and let me chase down the rest.
* What was it like? I don't have a single word to describe it, and when people ask me in person I find that I can take a good 20 minutes describing it. I'll do my best to sum it up.
disclaimer: they kept 3 students on hand as lab assistants and I was one for most of my two years there. Basically, we helped out the professors as needed and offered to help tutor. It paid something like $8/hr. My opinion may be skewed because of that.
- It was 100% for profit, and you could tell. Professors wouldn't really be allowed to fail students. It always bothered me that someone who only came to class on the first and last days was able to "barely pass"
- "Testing out" was frowned upon. You could do it, but you needed permission from the Dean, and meet with the professor and "career services" before you took the test. I was told you had to pass with a 100% to test out - I can't really vouch for that since I never tried.
- "Career Services" was a bit of a joke. It was 3 ladies who would critic your resume and let you know if they had heard of any job opening. Don't get me wrong, they were really nice people who wanted to help. I just didn't get much value from them. Sometimes local companies would come to ITT to post job openings. CS would at least email those out to you if you wanted.
- The classes were basic - "topic for dummies" basic. I'm no genius, but I didn't have to take notes. I don't know if it was that I had already been learning for 7 years before ITT or what, but I didn't really learn many new things there. It was kind of two years of review. I may be wrong on this one; I just don't have any memories of struggling to learn something.
- The professors and staff were nice. They did want to see you succeed.
- Credit transfers. They were upfront most colleges wouldn't transfer credits, but rumor had it the local university would take a few. Mainly the cores (maths, english, etc..)
* Final thoughts?
- Would I go again? No
- Would I tell other people to go? No
- Was it worth it? Yes. I did get a degree. It isn't prestigious and I don't care. I was able to have a job lined up (in my field) before graduation. Fast forward to today and I have moved to the other side of the country. I have a great family, a good consulting job, and the confidence I need to build any software you want.
How much of that was ITT, and how much was my own sweat and blood? I don't know. What I do know is I would not have been hired at the same place right out of college. Which means I wouldn't have made the connections I did which led to me moving across the country.
edit:
I see a few topics regarding loan forgiveness because of fraud. I experienced no such thing. Sure, the recruiters made a few statements that I consider un-true. But i wouldn't call it fraud. They did provide an education. (It may not have been the best) and they did try to place you in a job (they can't place everybody!)
Ultimately, it was on me for borrowing money; not the school
I graduated 7 years ago from ITT. I went for the same reason you did as I looked at the processes of traditional universities and didn't want to be in a lecture hall. I got a 2 year degree in CNS. I have been a software engineer for 8 years now professionally. Like you I saw it was for profit and the teachers were pressured into passing people even though they clearly shouldn't have. Some of the teachers knew what they were teaching and some didn't; in my linux class I was paid by a student to help them understand the curriculum because they couldn't learn it from the teacher. Was it worth it to me? For what I paid no. I wouldn't tell anyone else to go. My degree did transfer though to a non-profit regionally and nationally accredited school so I am hoping to complete that soon. Even though I am in the top bracket of software dev earners where I am I chose to go back to school for personal reasons as I study at night regardless and think at least get a degree out of it now, and man am I glad I transferred the degree when I did.
My attitude on our entire education system has changed, as I believe the government should have had more regulations in place in the first place so this would've never happened.
I know more people like you and I that went to ITT and regardless whether we would have not gone I do not think it would have affected our current situation at all differently, only that we would have had the money we spent on students loans to do something better with it.
Thanks for giving a thorough, positive (relatively!) account of your experience with ITT. I went to one a coding bootcamp myself (for-profit) and would say mostly the same things. The instruction leaved a lot to be desired and I left having learned fewer skills than were advertised, but it got me on the track I wanted to be on and I've been employed in the kind of work I wanted to be since.
Related: "The Law School Scam. For-profit law schools are a capitalist dream of privatized profits and socialized losses. But for their debt-saddled, no-job-prospect graduates, they can be a nightmare."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/09/the-law-...
From TFA: "Other former students are pushing to have their debts canceled by alleging that the company defrauded them into taking out the debt by advertising false job-placement rates."
That's the problem. Maybe I'm in the minority but everyone I know has like less than $10k in federal loans and $40k or more in private loans.
I can't figure out how I end up reading about people with $100k in federal student loan debt that get forgiveness for working for the government. How the hell did you manage to get THAT much in federal subsidized money? The only way I could go to school was by using private loans. My wife has private loans at 13% adjustable...
One way was going to graduate school. You can get federal loans for grad school at up to the entire cost of attendence. For law school or medical school that's 80k a year.
Thanks, I took a look, and that's great information for any current student, or students with outstanding loans. However, I was mostly joking; I've actually already paid them off completely, years ago, which wouldn't have been possible without my lovely wife. So the word "refund" was used purposefully, and getting one is likely improbable, haha.
For years it was always a struggle of bashing ITT with my colleagues/the internet, but talking them up with potential employers. The only thing $40k of debt got me was the perceived prestige an employer likely already had of ITT. Now that they're defunct there's definitely no up-selling them.
I graduated in 2005 from ITT in Pittsburgh and the total cost was a hair under 28K. I got a few grants, but had less than 20K in debt when I graduated. Was the pricing really that different where you went?
Also, that was over 10 years ago. I haven't had any employer really care that I went to ITT. Honestly in the last 5 or 6 years no employer even asked where I went. Where I am now most care about real world experience; not where you graduated.
Pittsburgh 2006 and I had about 40k in loans. Paid off my loans and have about 20k left to pay on my moms parent plus loan.
As for the employment situation. I think I might get filtered out simply for not having a BS sometimes. Sometimes I leave education off my resume and then I can discuss it when the recruiter calls and explain WHY I went there.
Other than that I just climbed the industry ladder over the last 10 years to put me into a decent position (six figures). At this point I do think the experience is way more valuable than the degree but I do lack some basic CompSci knowledge. I can't justify going back to school since the credits don't transfer and I make too much to justify additional debt. The ROI just isn't there.
The classes at ITT Greentree were laughable. I learned more just tinkering on my own. They were so easy to pass and you could tell the instructors were used to underachievers. I don't think they were allowed to fail anyone, even for lack of attendance. There seemed to be a large presence of ex-military spending their grants on the school too.
I had 1 instructor that was really good but all the students hated him. Another was fired for doing lines in the bathroom after I graduated. He would always stop class and send people to get little ceasar's cheesy bread. I knew he was on something. One day he went into a rant about how beautiful our hardback RDBMS book was. He never had us actually open the books but told us how gorgeous they were. That guy was so high.
I'm highly interested in seeing if there will be any forgiveness of debt for fraudulent practices.
'The classes at ITT Greentree were laughable. I learned more just tinkering on my own. They were so easy to pass and you could tell the instructors were used to underachievers.'
I was at Moon. I worked there as a lab assistant and became friends with the instructors. I approached a few about this, and was told in confidence they are not allowed to fail students without approval from the director. Really, the only grounds for not passing were never (literally) showing up for class. If a student came just once they had to find a way to pass them. Usually this meant I had to tutor them.
Dayton OH, no grants or anything. I've listed ITT on my resume, but never had a real discussion with an employer about it. They see Deans List (laughably easy) and just check their box. As the adjacent poster was saying, I may just leave them off future resumes, or put my degree as a footnote. Being a Web Developer for well over 10 years at this point trumps the value of any degree.
I think my only point was that it's _only_ value was what employers thought of them, which had a low rank on the value scale as it was, and now even that's gone. At this point I spent 40k for _literally_ nothing.
Not sure. I would suspect it may have to do with less funding from states helping to offset public state school tuition. This probably made it easier for private for-profit schools to charge high prices and still appear competitive. Now more students "needed"/relied on loans and the government jumped in to support them. It was probably harder to get thousands of people to pay thousands of dollars for a private no-name for-profit college when those that were "qualified" could go to a state school for much less.
How are students able to determine if the education they are paying for is valid or not? How are students that are in at-risk populations able to differentiate between valid accredited solutions and predatory schemes?
It's very easy to take advantage of certain people. I'm glad the government is doing its job protecting people from unfair practices.
If information asymmetry wasn't so exceedingly common maybe we wouldn't have to deal with consumers making poor mistakes because they "should have known better."
The government "freely" giving people money to spend on questionable goods and services doesn't help or protect the vulnerable people. The government "failed" first, the for-profits ripped people off, now the government is "saving" the vulnerable people that they allowed to get into the crappy situation by allowing them to accrue loads of debt to start with.
Touche. Perhaps full deferment should be changed to paying back $200 / month even while enrolled. I know this is controversial. But at least then the students might feel the pinch and squeeze that the loans will have on them and it might also help them learn personal finance. If a student is unable to make the payments and go into default then they'll have to take a semester off and make some money (this would also prevent some from going much much deeper into debt). All around its a crappy situation. But most high school graduates probably think Caveat Emptor was some Roman ruler...
I live in Minneapolis and the City Pages did quite an exposé on them back in 2015. It was pretty eye opening and gives a really good glimpse into their tactics:
What disgusts me most about the for-profit schools -- not to come off as too much of a snob -- is that the money we the taxpayers put into their pockets would be better spent improving community colleges and state schools.
I get not everyone needs to go to an Ivy League school, but for vocational basics -- what people are going to these for-profit schools hoping to gain -- community college should be "good enough."
I'd look at Bellevue Community College as a great example of a strong vocational tech school. That should be a model others could strive for. When I was younger I learned a great deal in BCC classes -- knowledge that was immediately beneficial to my day job as a software developer.
In contrast, the classes at BCC were far more hands-on training than what I got at the school I eventually graduated from. Educationally, community college I feel was better... but certainly for connections and networking the "name-brand" schools pay off.
I agree. People going to ITT should view a community college as a more than fair replacement. Further, anytime you introduce profit you introduce cost reduction and "keeping something back" from what the customer paid. i.e. In order to make profit they must be giving you a product that's worth less than you paid to them. That's wasteful.
> Students now enrolled at the company's technical schools will be able to cancel any federal student debt they incurred for their education if they decide against transferring their credits elsewhere... Taxpayers will record a loss on those debt cancellations.
This seems very unfair to taxpayers, who are essentially forced creditors. If the college reneges on its contract with students, then the students should seek to reclaim their losses through a class action lawsuit against ITT. The government shouldn't be covering losses on what were, arguably, bad investments.
Question for lawyers in the audience: If ITT is shut down because the "education" it was providing was complete shit and not recognized anywhere else, does that mean that the usual rules about education related personal debt surviving bankruptcy wouldn't apply?
There are various ways to get loan forgiveness for these loans, for reasons as you suggest, before the bankruptcy question. But pity the fool who paid off their loan and is now bankrupt.
> But pity the fool who paid off their loan and is now bankrupt.
Sadly that's becoming more and more common a trend in this country. It's the same as all the poor chaps who kept trying to pay their underwater mortgages while they're neighbors squatted for free.
Unfortunately, ITT is just the visible tip of the iceberg. There are MANY more for-profit schools of the same ilk as ITT that will fleece the same archetype of education-seeker. This isn't over by a long-shot. These schools are everywhere and they are probably chomping-at-the-bit to get their mits on displaced ITT students and all others that are susceptible to the type of manipulative and deceptive marketing practices that ITT, and many other for-profit schools, use.
It's not just for profit schools. There are a ton of private non-profit schools that operate the same scam. Instead of paying off shareholders, they operate to keep the organization going for all the people who make their living off it. Even many public schools run programs that are scams or just deliver such a terrible education that they aren't worth operating.
> Unfortunately, ITT is just the visible tip of the iceberg. There are MANY more for-profit schools of the same ilk as ITT that will fleece the same archetype of education-seeker. This isn't over by a long-shot.
Its not over, but the writing is on the wall, not just with the Corinthian and ITT actions, but more with the focus on ACICS (the accreditor of both Corinthian and ITT, and a vast number of other for-profit schools) which has formally been recommended to be removed as an accreditor recognized by the DOE (a recommendation which, I believe, must be acted on by the end of this month.)
Next, go after the public colleges? Other than brand, do they do a better job? Spend more than 30% of income on actual educational expenses (like IIT does)? I doubt it.
{edit}
Seems like US Universities are about 1:1 faculty vs staff. Up from 2:1 40 years ago.
I'm not sure the money is there to chase. I got an associates from a "public county tech", basically a public non-profit variant of the general ITT model, and it was about 1/10th ITT price, even today. The associates degree was worthless in the market by itself, but 56 of the 64 credit did transfer because they worked very hard with the state uni system and one of the local private colleges and accreditation boards.
If you take the ITT story, make the teachers actually teach to the accredited standard such that credit transfers "work", and cut the price 90%, it's not that bad of a deal. With tuition at $3K or so per semester, its hard to accumulate $50K in ITT style loans at a "public county tech" when a semester of school takes about half a year of part time employment at minimum wage...
I would imagine there are places to live without "public county tech" schools, but without educational institutions and other than importing them from us, where do you get your welders and electrician apprentices and similar?
You're mistaking the purpose of most public colleges -- it is not to educate students, but this is a service that they provide. ITT on the other hand, is only attempting to teach.
Judging by history, this would be seen as a license to artificially inflate costs, such that the university system would become a machine for extracting money from the public treasury and placing it into private hands.
You must have some feedback control, wherein the amount of public funding is dependent upon some objective criterion that measures the extent to which the public college provides a useful service to the public.
For instance, give the college a percentage (that decays exponentially) of the income taxes collected from their alumni. Schools that focus on teaching the knowledge and skills that actually make students employable would then be able to more freely provide tuition discounts to students, expecting that the recurring revenue stream after graduation would make up for the lesser amount collected up front.
They all hound their alumni for money all the time, anyway.
There were fewer students, fewer colleges, and lower enrollment rates. A big reason why college costs have risen is due to the artificial demand created by subsidized loans.
Just as a gas will expand to fill its containing vessel, costs tend to grow to meet the available budget.
If 100% of the university operating budget for student instruction is guaranteed by the state, you might be surprised at how often the seats in the lecture halls need to be replaced. Rather than being reupholstered after 10 and 15 years, and replaced after 20, they are replaced every 5 years. The profitable business moves from instruction to instruction support services.
Maybe the dean is part owner of a company that specializes in lecture hall seat installation, or in a landscaping company so large it can only handle entire zoos, universities, and corporate office parks.
Money without a vigilant guardian eventually gets taken. This is why pouring more stupid government money into anything should be done with extreme caution, because it often invites corruption, in order to get a space at the trough.
College costs have risen because they could rise. The subsidized loans don't empower the students; they just enrich those with the power to capture the subsidy. The money would have been far better spent on building out new universities, or increasing the student instruction capacity of existing universities. That would have driven down student costs--rather than ensuring that any rising costs could always be paid by debt--and the stupid government money would have been flowing to those younger academics who are now perpetually wandering in tenureless adjunctland.
Instead of the government trying to protect their loans and end up doing the opposite, maybe the government shouldn't be in the business of lending money to individuals? Government + lending + a supposed social benefit = disaster. First it was with helping people own homes, and now it's with helping people go to college. It sounds nice, but by lending money the government can just hide the true cost of what their doing. (Meanwhile government loans for housing have gotten worse: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21705317-americas-hous...)
"It will now likely rest on other parties to understand these reprehensible actions and to take action to attempt to prevent this from happening again."
So to mitigate the possible effects of the colleges all suddenly shutting down they were told to put up a huge amount of collateral, which caused them to all suddenly shut down?
That's quite a mitigation strategy the government has going on there.
Yes ITT was a money grabbing parasite and I'm glad they are gone. But the glamorous 4 years schools aren't as great as they set themselves to be.
Many students come out of the great schools owing thousands and having a very hard time getting a job.
This is not new. The fact is that universities weren't created for job training. Their job was to expand your knowledge. That's why you can get a degree in Greek mythology or Latin or whatever.
It was really a way for rich people to spend their time in something constructive. Somewhere the idea of a university and job training came together but universities aren't very good at job training so that's the big problem. We as a society don't have a great way to train the massed for society's jobs.
Community college focus on getting you to a four year college but they need to do a better job at job training.
For profit schools have tried but they focus on profits and lose sight of the students.
We blame the institutions but students also need to take responsibility. If you can't take the time learn don't expect to get a job where someone needs to have a productive employee to keep the business going.
Also the K-12 schools need to do something to fix the problem. How is it that a student goes through 13 years of school and not learn to be a productive employee? That the real shame.Yet we put the blame elsewhere.
Politicians love to argue the effects of same sex bathrooms but they aren't willing to take on why schools are failing society.
These are almost all going to be, by definition, disadvantaged people who have been lied to and defrauded. Yes, they 'chose' to do this, but the staggering amount of misleading advertising (and the worst kinds of sleazy-salesman lies & emotional manipulation of the vulnerable) leaves plenty of doubt as to how much of a choice they had.
I see very little difference between helping these people and helping storm victims. Nearly all for-profit education (that made a profit, anyway) is an ugly disaster and should never have been allowed to go on so long. The government actually did something right here for once.
One, an excessive focus on trying to "disincentivize undesired behaviour" is pretty creepy and controlling.
Two, this is not a matter of poor life decisions, this is a matter of fraud.
Three, even if people are impoverished by stupidity, you're either gonna pick up the tab to some extent or literally watch them die of destitution on the street. It appals me sometimes how often America treats this like it was a choice.
But forcing others to pay isn't controlling? I agree they were victims of fraud, but you should still not force others to pay for that at gunpoint. There must be a more peaceful way. And saying "literally watch them die of destitution on the street" is just a cheap, emotional straw man. No one is saying that.
I have no problem with people exercising free will, now if they expect someone else to pay for the consequences thats a different topic. It is a choice none forces anyone to not do a basic google search before dropping huge amount of money on something.
The government approved loans to the school. They carry some of the burden. They should be taking every asset from ITT first but I know that they will have none somehow and the execs will walk away with multiple millions.
Disclaimer: attended ITT and paid off the fed loan. Still paying on a parent plus that I doubt would qualify for forgiveness.
Fuck the word taxpayer, it's a lie hiding in a literalism. It pretends that people are paying for some service and they could stop. No. Society, as individuals on behalf of the whole, has responsibilities. One of those is to pick up the tab when people's lives have been ruined through no fault of their own.
The whole "small government" thing has just been people blowing off their responsibilities.
There's a difference between a stupid decision and being defrauded. A debt incurred as a result of fraud should simply be null and void. Probably the best way to do this is to make it the fraudster's debt, and not the victim's.
I don't think you understand how these schools sell their "education" to people who are ignorant of higher education. They literally targeted people who don't know any better and promise that they will make $75k out the gate.
Stop federally funding education. In the US we have 50 different opportunities to learn about how to create the best education system: all of these systems could learn from each other. When we allow federal funding of education we get much less diversity and innovation; we promote a mono-culture.
The entire concept of a corporate death penalty (in this case enforced by ITT no longer being eligible for federal student loans) is something that is not implemented nearly as frequently as it should be.
Federal student loans shouldn't be available to any non-accredited institution. If your credit hours won't transfer then it isn't a real College or University.
> Federal student loans shouldn't be available to any non-accredited institution.
ITT was accredited by an accreditor recognized by the government (though, among their many other problems, that accreditor has, this year, been formally recommended to be removed from that list of recognized accreditors; and even if they weren't removed, they had notified ITT that ITT's accreditation was in jeopardy -- that jeopardy was, in fact, the main direct basis of the recent DOE actions against ITT [the other direct basis is the risk associated with the fraud lawsuits against ITT, which are also the basis for the accreditation risk].)
> If your credit hours won't transfer then it isn't a real College or University.
Transferrability is a different issue than accreditation, and often differs strongly from receiving school to receiving school.
> Transferability is a different issue than accreditation, and often differs strongly from receiving school to receiving school.
Yes but basically no regionally accredited school is taking nationally accredited credits. There is no way to transfer to a "legitimate school" in that case.
> Yes but basically no regionally accredited school is taking nationally accredited credits.
Plenty of regionally accredited schools don't take regionally accredited credits (even from the same accreditor), either. Common accreditation doesn't imply transferability.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but most 300+-level classes won't transfer either. My mechanical engineering degree's MEEN 363: Feedback Control of Dynamic Systems won't transfer to other universities because NIH. (Or rather, NTH, I guess.)
Too little, too late; ITT and a whole legion of similar schools should have been erased long ago, given glaring evidence of their mismanagment, often misleading/fraudulent advertising, almost no value delivered (e.g. dismal grad job stats), waste of public money, etc. The pressing question is how long before ITT re-opens under a new name; I highly doubt it'll just go away.
There is a startup opportunity here. It actually shouldn't take a lot of resources for this kind of technical education. Get a community hall, few experienced volunteers and have them teach skills for free to anyone who is interested. Students just promise to pay portion of their income if and when they get job. A startup gets little cut for coordinating whole thing.
Will coding academies go down the same route as for profit colleges? Right now they are the darling of politicians who think they could solve the country's unemployment and tech shortage problems. But once your put Wall Street in charge and scale them up handle large numbers of students, I wonder if they will become the next ITT.
That's less than two weeks from when the Title IV "death penalty" (Assuming I have my titles right, it's been a while) was assessed. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12361737 )
people are so quick to make this a "for-profit" college issue, when it's not.
they shut down because the u.s. department of education banned them from enrolling new students who use federal financial aid.
what do you think would happen to "not for-profit" colleges if the u.s. department of education did the same to them? i'd argue it's the "not for-profit" schools who are driving tuition prices up because the government won't stop loaning money to anyone with a pulse.
dry up that loan money and watch prices fall from the sky.
How's Devry? I worked with a person that got a degree from there. It's for-profit too. I can't imagine it's any better than ITT with it's vendor lock in.
EDIT: Not sure what the downvotes are for. ITT gets shutdown, but Laureate does the same thing, but even more so and gets a pass. The only difference appears to be these kinds of payoffs to politicos.
I still feel like they get a bad rap. Was it overpriced? Probably. Did I learn a ton and have small class sizes. Absolutely. The instructors had all previously worked in the industry, and knew their topics very well.
On top of all that, after graduation their persistent pestering of "how many places did you apply to this week?" (surely to help their numbers) had a lot to do with me actually getting a job. I didn't want to let the lady that called me weekly down. It took a lot of persistence and interviewing but I finally got my foot firmly in the door about 6 months after graduation.
I've been gainfully employed in the industry for ten years, I'm debt free, and I'm happy. I'm thankful for my time there.