All colleges in America are not created equal. This comes as no surprise considering the vast disparities in ranking that exists between American schools, as stated by publications such as U.S. News & World Report and Forbes Magazine. However, the disparity in American colleges lies not in the schools ranked but in those we do not see on the traditional college list.
For-profit institutions for higher education are increasingly educating students in America. But it has become evident that the students at for-profits are granted a level of education far from the caliber of education offered at leading non-profit institutions. Over the last 30 years, the number of for-profit institutions has grown on average by 9 percent each year, with about 400 schools established in the last decade alone. The government cannot continue to allow mediocre organizations educate an increasing portion of our country without setting standards for the education that must be delivered.
Although one may not be familiar with the difference between for-profit and non-profit institutions, chances are one has come across a for-profit institution because of their ubiquitous marketing efforts. Non-profit schools include the likes of NYU and Harvard U.; schools that fund their programs through tuition, federal student aid and endowment funds. For-profit institutions, on the other hand, such as the famed U. Phoenix and DeVry U., are profit-driven and owned by corporations that generate money by means of tuition, federal student aid and stock revenues — as for-profit schools are more likely to be owned by public companies traded on a stock exchange.
For-profits are an indignity to the principle of education. A school’s purpose should be to educate its students, yet at for-profits more money is spent on marketing than on instruction for students. Students that attend these schools are promised an exceptional education but usually end up with an unaccredited degree and student loan debt or a degree with inadequate training and student loan debt. Clearly, the common theme here is student loan debt.
Despite only accounting for 12 percent of degrees, for-profits account for 50 percent of defaulted student loans in the country. The main reason for this is that students are paying more than they can afford for a lacking education and are subsequently unable to attain employment or find other means to pay off their loans.
Only 28 percent of the American population holds a college degree. The U.S. government has announced the Graduation Initiative, which hopes to increase the percentage of college graduates by the year 2020. Given the need for higher education, a potential solution to the problem of ineffective for-profit schools is not to abolish them, but rather to reform them. With an increasing demand for higher education in America, our country needs successful for-profit schools.
In order to make for-profit schools successful, the government must step in and stop treating for-profit schools solely as corporations. It is not enough for the government to be critical on the economics of these schools; educational standards must also be a priority. A for-profit should not be accredited if it is not able to educate students adequately for a given career. By regulating the accreditation agencies, for-profits will be forced to be more critical of the education they are providing.
The government must step in to prevent the corruption of education. Simply having access to education through for-profit schools does not mean Americans will grow to be more educated. If the quality of education in America does not become a priority, what will the quality of America become?