Buffalo Souljah
17th July 2010, 06:01
fyi, there is also an accompanying documentary which I have yet to watch (don't really care for film:it's for the lazy!):
Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.
Graduates of [a] for-profit school -- a college nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now sinking in over $200,000 in student debt.
The biggest player in the for-profit sector is the University of Phoenix -- now the largest college in the US with total enrollment approaching half a million students. Its revenues of almost $4 billion last year, up 25 percent from 2008, have made it a darling of Wall Street. Former top executive of the University of Phoenix Mark DeFusco (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/defusco.html) told FRONTLINE how the company's business-approach to higher education has paid off: "If you think about any business in America, what business would give up two months of business -- just essentially close down?" he asks. "[At the University of Phoenix], people go to school all year round. We start classes every five weeks. We built campuses by a freeway because we figured that's where the people were."
"The education system that was created hundreds of years ago needs to change," says Michael Clifford (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/clifford.html), a major education entrepreneur who speaks with FRONTLINE. Clifford, a former musician who never attended college, purchases struggling traditional colleges and turns them into for-profit companies. "The big opportunity," he says, "is the inefficiencies of some of the state systems, and the ability to transform schools and academic programs to better meet the needs of the people that need jobs."
"From a business perspective, it's a great story," says Jeffrey Silber (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/silber.html), a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Bank of Montreal. "You're serving a market that's been traditionally underserved. ... And it's a very profitable business -- it generates a lot of free cash flow."
And the cash cow of the for-profit education industry is the federal government. Though they enroll 10 percent of all post-secondary students, for-profit schools receive almost a quarter of federal financial aid. But Department of Education figures for 2009 show that 44 percent of the students who defaulted within three years of graduation were from for-profit schools, leading to serious questions about one of the key pillars of the profit degree college movement: that their degrees help students boost their earning power. This is a subject of increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.
source (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/): PBS FRONTLINE
So, instead of working to reform our struggling state institutions we should privatize them and turn them into tools of exploitation? I think that's rather ludicrous, but is to be expected, if we look at the overwhelming evidence that supports the thesis that corporations support the existence of a hated "nanny'" state that bails them out at the cost of the people. These new "schools" are exploiting the wages of real workers simply by receiving massive amounts of federal financial aid! Luckily, there is some reform being achieved on this front. However, I'm fearful whatever changes will be made simply won't be enough.
This continues the cycle of shoveling profits into the hands of the super rich at the expense of the poor, and is exactly what needs to be stopped, if we are going to turn our country and our world in a positive direction, if we want to achieve a true sort of "globalization", where peoples and cultures are interconnected and share resources, and not where some simply live in opulence while others starve. That is not the sort of globalization that benefits the vast majority of people in the world, whose governments apparently don't care a hoot about what they think, if actions like illegal sanctions against Cuba and Iran serve as any token of representation or our intervention in Yugoslavia a decade ago or in the Philippines a century further, to pick some seemingly at random. There is a marked difference in the opinions of the majority of the American populations and the diplomatic and military tactics of the U.S. government. There is a great book by Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton on the subject which is not to be missed. (Page, Bouton 2006)
The fact that these individuals believe they are "helping" communities by such initiatives is vastly beyond what would be redeemable through claims of ignorance--that's just evil! We could go around and around pointing fingers, but I think there are some salient societal features (hegemony of political parties, corruption and bribery, etc.) that prevent us (ie., workers: poor) from solving this dilemma by simply "working withing" the existing set of rules, which are skewed and benefit the rich. I think more drastic measures are called for, the proper foundation for which is not yet conceivable at the present, though reality can sometimes be surprising.
Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.
Graduates of [a] for-profit school -- a college nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now sinking in over $200,000 in student debt.
The biggest player in the for-profit sector is the University of Phoenix -- now the largest college in the US with total enrollment approaching half a million students. Its revenues of almost $4 billion last year, up 25 percent from 2008, have made it a darling of Wall Street. Former top executive of the University of Phoenix Mark DeFusco (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/defusco.html) told FRONTLINE how the company's business-approach to higher education has paid off: "If you think about any business in America, what business would give up two months of business -- just essentially close down?" he asks. "[At the University of Phoenix], people go to school all year round. We start classes every five weeks. We built campuses by a freeway because we figured that's where the people were."
"The education system that was created hundreds of years ago needs to change," says Michael Clifford (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/clifford.html), a major education entrepreneur who speaks with FRONTLINE. Clifford, a former musician who never attended college, purchases struggling traditional colleges and turns them into for-profit companies. "The big opportunity," he says, "is the inefficiencies of some of the state systems, and the ability to transform schools and academic programs to better meet the needs of the people that need jobs."
"From a business perspective, it's a great story," says Jeffrey Silber (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/interviews/silber.html), a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Bank of Montreal. "You're serving a market that's been traditionally underserved. ... And it's a very profitable business -- it generates a lot of free cash flow."
And the cash cow of the for-profit education industry is the federal government. Though they enroll 10 percent of all post-secondary students, for-profit schools receive almost a quarter of federal financial aid. But Department of Education figures for 2009 show that 44 percent of the students who defaulted within three years of graduation were from for-profit schools, leading to serious questions about one of the key pillars of the profit degree college movement: that their degrees help students boost their earning power. This is a subject of increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.
source (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/): PBS FRONTLINE
So, instead of working to reform our struggling state institutions we should privatize them and turn them into tools of exploitation? I think that's rather ludicrous, but is to be expected, if we look at the overwhelming evidence that supports the thesis that corporations support the existence of a hated "nanny'" state that bails them out at the cost of the people. These new "schools" are exploiting the wages of real workers simply by receiving massive amounts of federal financial aid! Luckily, there is some reform being achieved on this front. However, I'm fearful whatever changes will be made simply won't be enough.
This continues the cycle of shoveling profits into the hands of the super rich at the expense of the poor, and is exactly what needs to be stopped, if we are going to turn our country and our world in a positive direction, if we want to achieve a true sort of "globalization", where peoples and cultures are interconnected and share resources, and not where some simply live in opulence while others starve. That is not the sort of globalization that benefits the vast majority of people in the world, whose governments apparently don't care a hoot about what they think, if actions like illegal sanctions against Cuba and Iran serve as any token of representation or our intervention in Yugoslavia a decade ago or in the Philippines a century further, to pick some seemingly at random. There is a marked difference in the opinions of the majority of the American populations and the diplomatic and military tactics of the U.S. government. There is a great book by Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton on the subject which is not to be missed. (Page, Bouton 2006)
The fact that these individuals believe they are "helping" communities by such initiatives is vastly beyond what would be redeemable through claims of ignorance--that's just evil! We could go around and around pointing fingers, but I think there are some salient societal features (hegemony of political parties, corruption and bribery, etc.) that prevent us (ie., workers: poor) from solving this dilemma by simply "working withing" the existing set of rules, which are skewed and benefit the rich. I think more drastic measures are called for, the proper foundation for which is not yet conceivable at the present, though reality can sometimes be surprising.