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

[Herbert Spencer]

He's talking about poor third-world countries. Nothing like this could possibly be going on in the US, could it? In the US the government takes care of everyone, so we don't need entrepreneurs.

Schools that Serve
Marvin Olasky

Ten years ago James Tooley, a professor of education with a doctorate and a World Bank grant to study private schools in a dozen developing countries, took the standard path toward helping the poor: He flew first class and stayed at 5-star hotels.

But something happened in India as he visited private schools and colleges that cater to the privileged. At night, lying on 500-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets, he meditated about the "con" that he was now part of: Wealthy Indians enjoy foreign aid because they live in a poor country, the poor fall further behind, and the researchers live richly.

Then Tooley broke the rules. With guilt feelings and some spare time, he actually went into the slums instead of riding past them with his driver. He was surprised to see little handwritten signs announcing the existence of private schools: He thought private schools are for the rich. Guided through alleys and up narrow, dark, dirty staircases, he entered classrooms and found dedicated teachers and students.

Tooley found schools that survive not with government money or international bequests, but through $2-per-month fees paid by rickshaw pullers who scrimp and save to give their children a chance not to pull rickshaws. He went on to visit 50 Indian private schools in poor areas over the next 10 days. Did some foundation make them possible? No, these were for-profit schools created by poor but persevering entrepreneurs.

Tooley was astounded to see high motivation and better results than at the better-funded government schools. He then visited other private schools for the poor in cities and villages throughout India, Africa (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya), and even China. In The Beautiful Tree (Cato, 2009), he describes how he regularly found government schools with better-paid but poorly motivated teachers, and private schools somehow surviving on very little income.

Why did Tooley slog through the mud when he could have hung out in hotel bars with other international researchers? I emailed him and asked. Tooley responded: "I was brought up as an evangelical Christian, baptized at 14, but lost my faith by 16. For the next thirty years I was a searcher. Age 46, I said a prayer again recommitting myself to Jesus. Ups and downs in the faith since then." No surprise: When someone goes beyond the call of duty, it's often because Someone else is calling him—and the path isn't always straight.

Throughout most of The Beautiful Tree Tooley shows rather than tells, but in the interest of space here I'll need to quote his summary: In poor countries "private education forms the majority of provision. In these areas parents have genuine choices of a number of competing private schools within easy reach and are sensitive to the price mechanism (schools close if demand is low, and new schools open to cater to expanded demand)."

Tooley's crucial conclusions: "In these genuine markets, educational entrepreneurs respond to parental needs and requirements. . . . Their quality is higher than that of government schools provided for the poor." And his findings are not merely anecdotal. Governmental officials showed little interest in his findings, but a Templeton Foundation grant allowed him to create research teams that tested 24,000 fourth-graders from a variety of schools in India, China, Nigeria, and Ghana. The result: Children in private schools scored 75 percent better than comparable students in government schools. You'd think this would excite other World Bank researchers—but like Darrow Miller, Hernando de Soto, and William Easterly (see "Don't be a Bepper," WORLD, Jan. 13, 2007), Tooley looks for bottom-up rather than top-down strategies, and that could put a lot of Big Economic Planners out of work.

The title of Tooley's book comes from his sense that parents don't need government officials to tell them what to do: A beautiful tree can grow without supervision from "development experts" who believe that poor children will be educated only if governments, with funding from rich nations, establish free, universal public schooling.

The better way: Poor parents pay teachers directly. Voucher plans "if done in the right way" can help, but that's a vital caveat, because it's easy to end up with good ideas killed via fraud and unintended market distortions. The essential strategy is this: If students don't learn, teachers don't eat.

[Don Dresden]

4 Myths About For-Profit Online Learning
By Jorge Klor de Alva

For-profit higher education, particularly when delivered online, has consistently drawn attention for being efficient, scalable, and innovative. Successful for-profits tend to run smoothly at relatively low costs, and they invest generously in the kind of research that helps improve both the quality and delivery of their education.

These practices, along with flexible scheduling, robust student services, relevant programs, and successful recruitment practices, have made it possible for online programs at for-profit institutions to expand as quickly as student interest has grown. But in doing so, and in serving student populations previously underserved by traditional institutions, the for-profit sector has recently come under the type of scrutiny previously associated with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Behind the harsh scrutiny by the Education Department and Congress (one former Ed Department official called it a "witch hunt") is the fact that online education—a medium that has only grudgingly been adopted by traditionalists—has become very attractive to nontraditional students, who make up the fastest-growing segment of higher education.

This situation has turned out to be a major problem for proprietary schools because such students, who tend to be disproportionately eligible for Pell Grants and subsidized loans, are the most likely to drop out, default on their loans, and start their careers at lower salary levels than their traditional, first-time, full-time peers. The latter tend to be both single and financially dependent, and to work fewer hours or not at all—characteristics of students who are most likely to complete their degree.

Ironically, online education, maligned because it has attracted such a large numbers of at-risk students who are failing to succeed, is being promoted by a growing number of governors and the Obama administration as a way to educate more students more cheaply. But as I argue below, online is not necessarily cheaper than face-to-face education.

To add some light to the debate on for-profits, I would like to dispel several myths concerning proprietary online education that appear to be sustained by a general lack of information.

The first myth is that online education has been aggressively marketed by for-profit colleges and universities because it makes possible huge classes of hundreds, if not thousands, of students, thereby sharply reducing instructional costs.

The widely held belief that online education can lower faculty costs (the single biggest expenditure at most colleges) and reduce the need to build more buildings explains why many state officials and the executive branch of the federal government support online education. When it comes to public institutions, where some online courses can have as many as 400 students, and 45 to 100 students per course is not uncommon, the belief appears to be grounded in truth.

However, while for-profit institutions such as Capella and Kaplan Universities and the University of Phoenix educate hundreds of thousands of students online, their officials report that the average enrollment per course ranges from only nine to 18.

Accordingly, at Phoenix, as reported for August of this year, 470,800 students were being served by over 33,000 faculty members, for a student-faculty ratio of just over 14 to 1. This suggests that at the more successful proprietary online programs, a substantial investment must be made to educate each online student.

A second myth, closely related to the first, is that for-profit online courses lack the rigor of their face-to-face counterparts.

In small classes, such as the ones previously mentioned, students have a level of interaction with their professors that is rare at large public institutions, particularly during the first two years, when large lecture classes are common. Small classes allow for frequent assignments and substantial faculty feedback. They also make it difficult to cheat, because instructors have greater knowledge of both the abilities and idiosyncrasies of their students.

Given that most proprietary online programs focus on what a student is expected to know, as determined by experts in the subject matter, the level of rigor could be easily measured by comparing the expected results in these courses to those found at selective institutions. However, until such research is done and made public, any assumption that these courses are easy must be based on mere speculation.

A third myth is that employers are hesitant to hire graduates with degrees earned online from for-profit colleges.

This is another myth that can be answered empirically. Although much research needs to be done in this area, the research to date, such as that found in the Imagine America Foundation (formerly the Career College Foundation) report "Economic Impact of America's Career Colleges," shows that the degrees and certificates of career colleges, whether earned online or not, are widely recognized by employers. Needless to say, as more heads of human resources become familiar with graduates of online programs, their willingness to hire those graduates can be expected to increase. Furthermore, many of the nation's largest employers, such as Wal-Mart, UPS, and AT&T, have agreements with the larger proprietary online colleges for discounted tuition rates, scholarships, or tuition-reimbursement programs.

A fourth myth is that for-profit online colleges have a responsibility to maximize shareholder value and therefore put profits ahead of educational quality whenever possible.

One answer to this myth is obvious: Self-interest alone imposes a logic of continuous improvement and quality assurance for any for-profit company working to be or to remain successful. In online higher education, this means that survival and growth (i.e., profitability) depend upon investing not only in the upgrading of operations and the platform used to deliver instruction, but also particularly in the continuous improvement of student achievement. In effect, for-profits have powerful incentives to remain in compliance and produce positive educational results, because if they fail to do so, they will find themselves without students or financial backing.

Online enrollment grows at for-profits because students see them as the best choice, and growth and profitability follow when students succeed in classes and earn degrees. To the extent that they do not, enrollments and profitability will necessarily decline, along with investor interest.

Another way to dispel this myth is to show positive academic and employment results for students in for-profit institutions. Despite the many risk factors of most students attending proprietary institutions, recent research by the Parthenon Group shows that graduation rates in the sector are relatively high—especially in two-year programs, where they surpass those of public community colleges—as are students' postgraduation employment and economic success.

For an example of positive comparative performance, Phoenix demonstrated in its 2008 "Academic Annual Report" that its student-learning results improved at rates equal to or better than those of comparable traditional institutions for similarly situated students. That is, first-year Phoenix students enroll with lower assessment scores than the national average on the Measure of Proficiency and Progress test, administered by the Educational Testing Service. But they reduce that gap significantly by their senior year, as measured by their improvement on the MAPP. Compared with students from comparable nonprofit and public institutions, Phoenix students demonstrated similar to better levels of improvement throughout the course of their education, especially in English and mathematics.

Disclosure: I am president of Nexus Research and Policy Center, an independent, nonprofit group whose primary donors are currently the Apollo Group, parent company of Phoenix, and the John G. Sperling Foundation. While we acknowledge that Nexus's objectivity may be questioned as a consequence of the sources that finance it, the recognized importance of its independence has led both Apollo and the foundation to not interfere with its governance, editorial policy, or research agenda, which is based on government and sector data available to all scholars.

Aside from the myths surrounding the for-profit sector and its online programs, one thing is sure: Given the innovative nature of for-profit education, we can expect this sector to lead the way into the future of online education. Already Phoenix is building a sophisticated technology platform, based on current research in the learning sciences and populated with computer-based smart tutors. Its expected capacity to adapt to students' needs will make this platform capable of improving the learning experience and performance of a broad range of learners, including those who are failing in today's online courses.

Maybe when innovations such as this one go mainstream, most of the myths will be dispelled. I believe that, so I'll hold my breath.

[Yancy Derringer]

Lies too big even for government operatives?

GAO revises its report critical of practices at for-profit schools
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 8:44 PM

The Government Accountability Office has revised portions of a report it released last summer on recruiting practices in for-profit higher education, softening several examples from an undercover investigation but standing by its central finding that colleges had encouraged fraud and misled potential applicants.

The revisions have come as the Obama administration and senior Democratic lawmakers are pushing for tougher regulation of the industry. A Republican senator said the revisions called into question some of the conclusions in the report.

The original report, issued Aug. 4 in testimony to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, examined recruiting practices at 15 for-profit colleges, including campuses operated by the Apollo Group, Corinthian Colleges and The Washington Post Co.'s Kaplan unit.

Undercover GAO investigators posed as prospective students in encounters with college representatives that were captured in audio and video recordings. The GAO is a nonpartisan [say what?!?] investigative arm of Congress.

Its widely reported findings were a major political setback for the industry, and executives apologized for incidents that put their schools in an embarrassing light. Industry critics said the report buttressed their case as they pushed for a new rule requiring that for-profit colleges demonstrate that their courses lead to "gainful employment" for their students or lose access to lucrative federal student aid programs.

The share prices for several for-profit education companies fell sharply after the report's release, and the industry has since mounted an aggressive lobbying and advertising campaign portraying administration efforts to impose new regulations as a threat to educational access for students underserved by traditional colleges.

Key passages altered

The revised report, posted Nov. 30 on the GAO Web site, changed some key passages. In one anecdote cited as an example of deceptive marketing, the GAO originally reported: "Undercover applicant was told that he could earn up to $100 an hour as a massage therapist. While this may be possible, according to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] 90 percent of all massage therapists in California make less than $34 per hour."

The revised version states: "While one school representative indicated to the undercover applicant that he could earn up to $30 an hour as a massage therapist, another representative told the applicant that the school's massage instructors and directors can earn $150-$200 an hour. While this may be possible, according to the BLS, 90 percent of all massage therapists in California make less than $34 per hour."

In another example, the report originally stated that a college representative "told the undercover applicant that by the time the college would be required by [the] Education [Department] to verify any information about the applicant, the applicant would have already graduated from the 7-month program."

The revised version states that "the undercover applicant suggested" that possibility and the "representative acknowledged this was true."

There were several other significant edits to the examples detailed in the report.

GAO spokesman Chuck Young wrote in an e-mail that the office issues revisions when "additional information comes to light and provides additional context to our already published work." Of the roughly 1,000 reports issued in the last fiscal year, about 12 received later revisions, he said. He added that the office reviewed more than 80 hours of audio from the investigation before it released the revision on the for-profit college report.

"Nothing changed with the overall message of the report, and nothing changed with any of our findings," Young wrote.

'Troubling questions'

Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.), the committee's ranking Republican, wrote in a letter Tuesday to the acting comptroller, Gene L. Dodaro, who heads the GAO, that the revisions raise "a number of troubling questions."

Enzi wrote that the revisions appear "substantial" and "undermine many of the allegations" in the GAO report. He asked Dodaro to withdraw the testimony and explain in detail why the changes were made.

Justine Sessions, a spokeswoman for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the committee chairman, said the revisions "do not change the substance of the report" or its conclusions that the for-profit colleges investigated "used deceptive or fraudulent recruiting techniques to enroll new students."

Lanny Davis, a spokesman for the Coalition for Educational Success, which represents some for-profit colleges, said the revisions in the report appeared on the whole to portray the industry less harshly. None of the revisions, he said, made the industry look worse.

"The entire credibility of this report is called into question," Davis said.

Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton said the department would have no comment on the revisions.

[ham]

Lies too big even for government operatives?

GAO revises its report critical of practices at for-profit schools
By Nick Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 8:44 PM

The Government Accountability Office has revised portions of a report it released last summer on recruiting practices in for-profit higher education, softening several examples from an undercover investigation but standing by its central finding that colleges had encouraged fraud and misled potential applicants.

The revisions have come as the Obama administration and senior Democratic lawmakers are pushing for tougher regulation of the industry. A Republican senator said the revisions called into question some of the conclusions in the report.



Key passages altered

The revised report, posted Nov. 30 on the GAO Web site, changed some key passages. In one anecdote cited as an example of deceptive marketing, the GAO originally reported: "Undercover applicant was told that he could earn up to $100 an hour as a massage therapist. While this may be possible, according to the [Bureau of Labor Statistics] 90 percent of all massage therapists in California make less than $34 per hour."

The revised version states: "While one school representative indicated to the undercover applicant that he could earn up to $30 an hour as a massage therapist, another representative told the applicant that the school's massage instructors and directors can earn $150-$200 an hour. While this may be possible, according to the BLS, 90 percent of all massage therapists in California make less than $34 per hour."

In another example, the report originally stated that a college representative "told the undercover applicant that by the time the college would be required by [the] Education [Department] to verify any information about the applicant, the applicant would have already graduated from the 7-month program."

The revised version states that "the undercover applicant suggested" that possibility and the "representative acknowledged this was true."

There were several other significant edits to the examples detailed in the report.

GAO spokesman Chuck Young wrote in an e-mail that the office issues revisions when "additional information comes to light and provides additional context to our already published work." Of the roughly 1,000 reports issued in the last fiscal year, about 12 received later revisions, he said. He added that the office reviewed more than 80 hours of audio from the investigation before it released the revision on the for-profit college report.

"Nothing changed with the overall message of the report, and nothing changed with any of our findings," Young wrote.

'Troubling questions'

Sen. Mike Enzi (Wyo.), the committee's ranking Republican, wrote in a letter Tuesday to the acting comptroller, Gene L. Dodaro, who heads the GAO, that the revisions raise "a number of troubling questions."

Enzi wrote that the revisions appear "substantial" and "undermine many of the allegations" in the GAO report. He asked Dodaro to withdraw the testimony and explain in detail why the changes were made.

Justine Sessions, a spokeswoman for Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the committee chairman, said the revisions "do not change the substance of the report" or its conclusions that the for-profit colleges investigated "used deceptive or fraudulent recruiting techniques to enroll new students."

Lanny Davis, a spokesman for the Coalition for Educational Success, which represents some for-profit colleges, said the revisions in the report appeared on the whole to portray the industry less harshly. None of the revisions, he said, made the industry look worse.

"The entire credibility of this report is called into question," Davis said.

Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton said the department would have no comment on the revisions.

PFFT! The for-profits go to Nuremberg or what?

[Albert Hidel]

A Fair Look at For-Profit Higher Education
Wendell Cox

Much has been said and written lately about “for-profit higher education” – in large part because the U.S. Department of Education is expected to soon publish so-called “Gainful Employment” rules that would place de facto mandates on who these schools can teach and what they can be taught. Coupled with heated hearings on Capitol Hill led by Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, and a slew of largely unbalanced media coverage, the sector has taken an enormous hit of late.

To be fair, the sector has acknowledged past abuses in recruiting and financial-aid counseling practices. But to be more fair, perhaps it’s time to think about what function these institutions serve, and what higher education would look like if they were to disappear—as the recent barrage suggests many would like.

First, let’s think about the typical student enrolled in for-profit schools today: it’s not the fresh-out-of high school 18-year old whose parents finance them on to full-time college. Far and away, it’s the so-called “non-traditional” student—older, working adults, often minorities, who typically support a family. Just a decade ago, a higher education simply wasn’t in the cards for this large and rapidly growing segment of the U.S. population; today they are there by the many thousands.

Understandably, these are not students in school for a liberal arts grounding, intramural athletics and weekend partying, but for highly focused programs that help them advance in a current career or begin a new one. These are programs shaped by the real-life needs of employers who face workforce shortages – programs that tie learning to long-term, sustaining, new American jobs in criminal justice, IT, health care and other professions. Moreover, they are delivered in an environment sensitive to these students’ real-life needs: one that allows them to learn late at night or before dawn, at their own pace, with flexible course offerings, remote learning and faculty who are often practitioners in their respective fields and real-life role models. They offer a student-focused approach that is arguably harder to find in crowded classrooms.

Another reality is that all the qualities that distinguish non-traditional students from their traditional peers, also make them more apt to drop out of school. The Department of Education classifies these traits as “risk factors” that heavily impact graduation rates. Yet, when students with similar risk factors are compared, those that attend for-profit institutions typically have a greater likelihood of graduating than their peers at other schools. When graduation rates at two-year for-profit programs are compared to two-year public programs (community colleges), the disparity is even greater—60% vs. 26%.

To be sure, not every student is right for the for-profit system; each needs and deserves an opportunity to assess whether a program is the right fit before getting locked into a financial obligation. The schools are responding: Kaplan, for instance, has a program that gives students the chance to take classes for over a month that frees them from any financial obligation if they decide to leave. What’s more, this grace period gives instructors the ability to help a student gauge whether he or she is likely to succeed in that particular program.

So the fair question to ask is, “Where would these students go if the for-profit sector didn’t exist?” Many suggest community colleges—but for all the reasons above, complicated by the huge state budget deficits and overcrowded classrooms confronting many community colleges today—it’s not a perfect substitute.

As President Obama made bluntly clear is his State of the Union address last week, having no degree is really no longer much of an option:

Many people watching tonight can probably remember a time when finding a good job meant showing up at a nearby factory or a business downtown. You didn't always need a degree, and your competition was pretty much limited to your neighbors. If you worked hard, chances are you'd have a job for life, with a decent paycheck, good benefits, and the occasional promotion. Maybe you'd even have the pride of seeing your kids work at the same company. That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful. I've seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories, and the vacant storefronts of once busy Main Streets. I've heard it in the frustrations of Americans who've seen their paychecks dwindle or their jobs disappear – proud men and women who feel like the rules have been changed in the middle of the game.

The rules of the game have changed. The for-profit sector has grown to reflect the new reality that access to a higher education is no longer the province of the privileged few, but a prerequisite to “owning our future” as a country and as individuals.

The need for more options in higher education is greater today than ever before. And judging by demographics and a changing economy alone, it’s a need that will only grow.

[Albert Hidel]

Gainful Employment Rule Will Limit Access to Non-Traditional Colleges

Posted June 12th, 2011 at 8:22am
Lindsey Burke

On Tuesday, Senator Mike Enzi (R–WY) took a stand against the Department of Education’s (DOE) assault on the for-profit college sector, walking out of a hearing on the DOE’s new regulations limiting access to higher education.

The new “gainful employment” rule issued by the DOE on June 2 restricts access to student loans for students attending for-profit universities. Enzi noted in a statement released after the hearing:

"Many of these affected schools provide important training for those who choose to become mechanics, plumbers and electricians. This rule uses a heavy hand against these schools and makes it more difficult for Americans to access educational opportunities."

Senator Tom Harkin (D–IA), a supporter of the new regulations, wants to see the DOE pursue even more aggressive restrictions on the for-profit sector. Harkin has been orchestrating the fight against for-profit colleges, holding a series of hearings last fall. One hearing last August was based in large part on a rushed GAO report that contained numerous errors, an extremely rare occurrence with the agency.

The new rules prohibit students from receiving federal loans or grants to attend a for-profit college if the college’s average debt-to-earnings ratio exceeds 12 percent of a graduate’s income or 30 percent of discretionary income. Harris Miller, president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, said the new regulations are “basically a back-door way of price fixing.”

Even though the final 436-page rule issued by the DOE provided some concessions to the for-profit sector, the new debt-to-earnings restriction means that an estimated 18 percent of for-profit programs will fail to meet the new regulations, and 5 percent could lose eligibility entirely, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

And an even more concerning problem has arisen. In order to track the debt-to-earnings ratio of for-profit college graduates, the Social Security Administration will be providing its income data on individual students to the U.S. Department of Education. According to the Manhattan Institute’s Minding the Campus blog:

"Most troubling is the involvement of the Social Security Administration [SSA]—and also, indirectly, the Internal Revenue Service, which supplies earnings information to the SSA based on tax returns. After all, the SSA is supposed to be in the business of calculating Social Security benefits, not monitoring compliance with laws that have nothing to do with Social Security. The IRS, in turn, is supposed to be in the business of collecting taxes, including Social Security taxes, not helping the Education Department decide whether the University of Phoenix is in compliance with new gainful employment rules. Both agencies, the IRS in particular, are bound by strict laws forbidding the sharing of data except as explicitly permitted by federal statute, such as the one that allows the SSA to use IRS-supplied tax-return information along with filings by employers to determine benefits. Taxpayers have historically relied on the nearly complete confidentiality of their tax-return information as an incentive to honesty in reporting."

Those who favor the new regulations on the for-profit sector note that the sector can claim just 12 percent of students in higher education overall, yet it accounts for nearly 25 percent of student aid. Half of all loan defaults are from students at for-profit universities. However, these statistics don’t provide an “apples-to-apples” comparison with similar students at traditional universities. Daniel Bennett writes in The New York Times:

"While data suggest that default rates are higher among for-profit schools than other sectors, defaults at public community colleges are comparable even though they charge much lower tuition (taxpayer subsidies cover the remaining costs). Both of these sectors serve a challenging student population (low-income and minority), and yet proprietary schools are singled out by the “gainful employment” regulations.

"Default rates have risen for all of postsecondary education, as the national cohort default rate increased to 7 percent in 2008 from 4.5 percent in 2003."

For-profits are finding success because they are helping a segment of students that are historically underserved by traditional universities. In order to ensure that students continue to have access to for-profit institutions, Senator Jim DeMint (R–SC) has offered an amendment that would nullify the gainful employment rule by preventing the new regulation from having any force of law.

President Obama says he wants the United States to have the highest percentage of college graduates by the year 2020. The merits of the goal aside, if the President is serious, his Administration should stop the witch hunt against for-profit colleges.

[Winston Smith]

'Non-profit' Colleges Can Be Quite Profitable
Saturday, 27 Aug 2011 09:56 PM

So-called "non-profit" colleges actually rake in profits by spending less on students than they reap in revenue, according to a new report.

"If we define profit as 'charging consumers more for a service than it costs to provide that service,' then both government and officially non-profit institutions" are profitable, the report from the John Williams Pope Center for Higher Education Policy discloses.

The report cites a book by Oklahoma State professor Vance Fried, "Better/Cheaper College." He calculates that a quality liberal arts education at a residential college needs to cost only around $8,000 per year, but most colleges charge far more.

"Based on tuition revenues alone, the average private undergraduate school makes about $5,500 per student per year," Fried writes in a recent paper.

"When donations and endowment income are added, profits jump to $12,800 per student," which is twice the profit margin earned by for-profit University of Phoenix, he points out.

Schools like Harvard, a private university, and the University of North Carolina, a public institution, "do not show profits on their books, but instead take their profits in the form of spending on some combination of research, graduate education, low-demand majors, low faculty teaching loads, excess compensation, and featherbedding," Fried writes.

Public universities are also profitable because they receive large amounts of support from the state. Fried calculates that profit at these schools is around $11,000 per student. The "profits are spent on items like low teaching loads and excessive compensation," he adds.

Fried regards faculty research as an unnecessary expense. And he suggests that professors should have a teaching load of 12 hours per semester even if they are engaged in research.

He also argues that a reduction in government support for higher education would lead to higher college productivity — and lower government spending.

So, for example, some fat, bald, underachieving prof stuck at a backwater government university, one with a low teaching load (such as one course per semester), and excessive compensation (such as >$100,000 per year) would be the epitome of the huge hypocritical ripoff that is the "non-profit" higher ed cartel.

Can anyone think of someone who fits that profile? Someone who spends his spare time stalking small Christian schools and start ups so he can try to drive them out of business? Because he wants integrity and quality in higher ed? NO! Because he wants to eliminate competition and keep ripping off students and taxpayers by collecting his fat perks while providing little or no productivity!!

[ham]

So, for example, some fat, bald, underachieving prof stuck at a backwater government university, one with a low teaching load (such as one course per semester), and excessive compensation (such as >$100,000 per year) would be the epitome of the huge hypocritical ripoff that is the "non-profit" Rolleyes higher ed cartel.

If MY FRIEND craps his pants spreading a pungent odor, come on! Cut the guy some slack, will ya? He's sick g-d dammit! What are you, a Nazi or a pedophile that you can't feel his embarrassment?

If YOUR FRIEND craps his pants spreading a pungent odor, he's the vilest sight I beheld in ages! Sick? You bet that IS sick! Didn't the foul bastard know about toilets? I bet he's drunk again...

[Martin Eisenstadt]

So, for example, some fat, bald, underachieving prof stuck at a backwater government university, one with a low teaching load (such as one course per semester), and excessive compensation (such as >$100,000 per year) would be the epitome of the huge hypocritical ripoff that is the "non-profit" higher ed cartel.

Gollin is certainly the poster boy for that.

If YOUR FRIEND craps his pants spreading a pungent odor, he's the vilest sight I beheld in ages! Sick? You bet that IS sick! Didn't the foul bastard know about toilets? I bet he's drunk again...

Now that you mention it, Gollin could be the poster boy for that too!

[Albert Hidel]

Now that you mention it, Gollin could be the poster boy for that too!

Gollin could sell a lot of posters.
Profscam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education

Profscam reveals the direct and ultimate reason for the collapse of higher education in the United States - the selfish, wayward, and corrupt American university professor. In this fiercely argued, often infuriating book, investigative journalist Charles J. Sykes charges that college teaching has become a lucrative racket, where the most important responsibility - undergraduate teaching - has been abandoned in favor of trendy research, the pursuit of personal or political agendas, outside consulting contracts, and the drive for tenure.