New book explores the history of for-profit institutions or colleges-businesses

• New book explores the history of for-profit institutions or colleges-businesses

  The sad sorry history of the for-profit college business I admit I have worked at several for-profit colleges that are now out-of-business or on the edge of financial collapse. Community colleges even with their flaws are saints in this story. Sure our community colleges are underfunded and overwhelmed but at least community colleges are honest.

  • In his book, Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream (Johns Hopkins University Press), Winthrop University history professor A. J. Angulo explores the history of for-profit institutions from the apprenticeship system of America’s early decades to today’s multibillion-dollar industry. Angulo explores how these institutions have grown over the centuries and evolved as the regulatory climate has increased.

  • , there wasn’t a single history of for-profits to be found. I wrote Diploma Mills because I wanted to read a book that had yet to be written.

  • but three key takeaways have to do with our assumptions about the efficient, responsive and innovative nature of for-profits

  • Profits are like drugs. Under certain regulated conditions, we’re OK with them.

  • : people have long wanted these institutions to be either highly regulated or legislated out of existence.

  • FPCUs have had enormous difficulty maintaining the kind of professional and academic standards that have been the lifeblood of nonprofit colleges and universities for centuries.

  • That’s why midcentury reformers rallied against “sheep skinners” and “shysters” of the proprietary sector. And that’s why we continue to see students and taxpayers in litigation against for-profits like Corinthian, ITT Technical Institute and Trump Universit

  • Just because for-profits make it easier for first-generation students to access their programs doesn’t mean that they graduate with the skills and training they need to break out of cycles of poverty.

  • For-profits have had great success undermining regulations through the use of sophisticated lobbying efforts.

  • For students, especially first-generation students, to make informed decisions, they need to have access to accurate information about an institution’s recruitment practices, loan options, graduation rates, student loan defaults and placement rates.

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