For-Profits Serve Poor, Get Better Results Than Government Schools

[Yancy Derringer]

Another nice post by Glen S. McGhee in the otherwise useless IHE today, regarding the proposed for-profit standards of conduct:

There Is Only One List That Matters
Posted by Glen S. McGhee , Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project on September 15, 2011

If accurate information is so important, why misrepresent the existing Title IV gatekeepers as "independent accreditors"?

At the root of the current quality problems is the fact that accreditors are not independent, but drawn from the schools themselves, and accreditation is self-administered.

Moves such as this are meant to address threats to the for-profit sector as a whole, and are nothing more than a new layer of "additional voluntary standards of conduct" over and above existing safeguards. Note how these proposals jump ahead of current accrediting standards, in terms of rigor, and even, in some cases, federal Title IV requirements.

The biggest problem is -- as has always been the case -- enforcement. Getting "dropped from the list" always sounds impressive, but this isn't the list of those institutions given access to Title IV funds. It isn't even a real list yet. So, there is a tremendous credibility problem here that needs to be addressed, but cannot be, because this is not a new Title IV accreditor, and consequently, it is not even recognized by the US Secretary of Education. Or CHEA, for that matter.

Those legislators endorsing this proposal are, in fact, undermining the credibility of the gatekeeping triad as it now exists. Maybe some of them have better ideas and proposals for accreditation that they can bring to the table for accreditation reform -- maybe incorporating these changes into existing 34 CFR 602.

Why would this be a good idea?

Think about it -- it's not just the for-profit schools that are having these problems, but public sector schools have quality issues as well.

The only difference here, is that the for-profit sector seems willing to risk addressing its problems. The public sector never will -- until *its* flow of federal dollars is threatened as well.

For this proposal to really mean something, the foundation needs to move ahead with recognition, and then openly compete with existing accreditors for members. Without this kind of status, it cannot amount to much where it counts -- being dropped from the list. Right now, there is only one list that matters.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/..._take_hold

[Bwana]

The picture of schools that serve the poor in developing nations is more diverse than presented in the current posts.

There are schools that started out as non-accredited schools in tertiary education with the special mission of offering the best of quality education they could provide to students from the many slums that you find in the bigger towns of developing nations. In the first years of their existence, they may have "only" offered religious programmes. Later, they may have also decided to include programmes of a more secular nature like teacher training in a special field - it is obvious that religious programmes alone do not and cannot satisfy all the complex needs of societies in developing nations. Including programmes of a more secular nature may eventually make the school decide to pursue government-recognised accreditation, which is always costly. If the school is profit-oriented, it will have tuition fees increased for students, and it will continue to "sell" education for business profit. If a school is not profit-oriented, it will have a network of supporting sponsors that will allow the school to exist and do its good job for those in need.

[Ben Johnson]

The picture of schools that serve the poor in developing nations is more diverse than presented in the current posts.

There are schools that started out as non-accredited schools in tertiary education with the special mission of offering the best of quality education they could provide to students from the many slums that you find in the bigger towns of developing nations. In the first years of their existence, they may have "only" offered religious programmes.

Harvard, Yale etc. started as religious schools. Many American educators are a little culturally obtuse believing that if it isn't American, it's inferior.