Comments on 3 Ideas for For-Profit Communication

• Communication
• Posted by MiddleMgmt at A for-profit on September 7, 2010 at 4:15am EDT

• I'm middle management at a for-profit (so I have no authority to speak for the company and am only sharing my impressions) and am a PhD candidate at a public R1 in education policy (so I have both perspectives). I can tell you my personal perceptions about the issues of communication you mention.

  1. Honestly, the senior management doesn't really care what traditional higher ed has to say about for-profit. They feel that they have never gotten a fair hearing from non-profit higher ed and no longer feel the need to try. I've heard a lot of "condemn first" from the education establishment when I mention my employer, so much that I no longer talk about it. There is an attitude that has already tried and convicted for-profit anything as bad. (K-12 as well... charter schools get their share of trouble.) Honestly, I can see why the for-profits don't reach out to traditional higher ed. The judgement has already been passed, so why bother.

  2. Some of the for-profits have tried to reach out and have presented considerable data. For example University of Phoenix has released an academic annual report for the last two years (http://www.phoenix.edu/about_us/publications/academic-annual-report.html) as well as releasing a position paper that presents a great deal of information on the place of for-profits (http://apollogrp.edu/Investor/Reports/Higher%20Education%20at%20a%20Crossroads%20FINAL%20v3.pdf). Both documents contain a great deal of information about that schools student base, achievement and outcomes. The thing is these aren't academic documents. They are intended for congressmen, investors and the like. So academics may not take them seriously.

  3. If you listen to the candid conversations in the hallways, our executives really believe in the educational mission of our university and believe they are providing educational opportunities for people who never would have had that opportunity otherwise. Every time the generalization is made that it's all about the money, the interest in dialog dies a little.

  4. There is some defensiveness, and its justified. On the for profit side you have schools being pilloried for not knowing the ins and outs of every state's teacher certification rules, while on the not-for-profit side you have students being told that to get in-state tuition they should either "get married or join the military" (yes, that happened). You can find examples of egregious behaviors at any big universities and most small ones. It's just that no one is looking anywhere beyond the for-profits.

  5. Honestly my husband is telling me not to post this. I'm an employee. I don't have tenure and despite trying to make it clear that I am not representing my company it is possible someone could come after me over something like this. External affairs monitors terms related to the university and the industry, so your posting is already in someone's inbox waiting for review tomorrow morning. That is why more employees don't post about this stuff.

  So what is my point? For-profit doesn't trust the educational establishment due to experience; they have always been attacked and see no reason to believe that anything has changed. So they've withdrawn from this particular field. Can you honestly blame them?

• No More One-Sided "Research" Would Be a Good Start
• Posted by StevenB on September 7, 2010 at 9:30am EDT

• For one thing, to improve their communication efforts, for-profits could stop with the so-called "unbiased" research students conducted by "independent" think tanks that always seem to come p with the same conclusions: for-profits are much more effective, efficient, productive, less costly, etc. than non-profits. As someone commented in response to UP's latest unbiased study, it's like the tobacco firms coming out with students telling us that smoking is actually good for your health. I'd add that it's like for-profit scholarly publishers telling the public that open access publishing of research will actually make it harder to get access to research reports. It's so blatanly self-serving that you just can't take it seriously. Cutting it out would be a step in the right direction.

• Why should they care?
• Posted by Interested Observer on September 7, 2010 at 10:30am EDT

• Why should non-profits care what traditional higher-ed thinks of them. I agree they are loosing the communications battle but that is with and for the general public. THAT's the battle they need to fight and win.

• stopthegreed
• Posted by stopthegreed on September 7, 2010 at 11:30am EDT

• I work at a for-profit. I do know they serve an underserved population. However, they at times, admit students who seem to only have the pre-requisite of having a pulse. These students are so underprepared, that we change attendance policies, late work policies, whatever is possible to make sure they can pass our watered down classes. The tuition prices are over-inflated to pay the salaries of the upper management. There are teachers at our school making $70,000 a year. Admissions representatives make the same as teachers with master's degrees, $45,000. In order to cut tuition, some of the people lining their deep pockets will need to cut programs, staff, company bonuses, or salaries. I think it's about time the government took a close look at these places. These kids are graduating with huge loan burdens, and possibly slim chances of finding employment in their career fields. Before the writer advocates corporate spin through the p.r. departments and letter writing campaigns, find out how many of these students actually end up employed in their fields after graduation.

• StopTheGreed
• Posted by Keith Strachan , Director at Bayview Interactive on September 7, 2010 at 12:15pm EDT

• Stopthegreed does NOT work at a for-profit school, as if that weren't blatantly obvious! The tactics of you and others are no longer going to be effective. They no longer work in politics, and will continue to be diminished in all other forums. Have some integrity when submitting your opposition to an argument.

• Posted by MiddleMgmt at A for-profit on September 7, 2010 at 2:00pm EDT

• @SteveB - thank you for making point #1 from my comments above. The academic process says that you review the arguments and address them. Not dismiss them out of hand. Why spend time and effort engaging with an audience who has no intention of engaging as well.

  @StoptheGreed - "There are teachers at our school making $70,000 a year. " Are you saying that's bad? Have you looked at salaries in a public business school lately? 70k is not a lot of money, especially when starting salaries for newly minted PhDs even in the humanities and social sciences if over 50k at a public school.

  "Admissions representatives make the same as teachers with master's degrees, $45,000." This says more about how k-12 teachers are underpaid than it does about admissions representatives are overpaid. You seemed to have a pretty skewed view of reasonable salaries....

  you are correct - many students are too underprepared to be in college. And most for-profits will admit them anyway. So will most community colleges. But here is the inherent conflict; The liberal education establishment believes firmly in access for all, yet comes down like a ton of bricks on those living with the consequences of that access for providing it in the first place. It seems hypocritical.

  If the goal is higher education for everyone who wants it than we will continue to have underprepared students to deal with. remedial education exists in every sector of higher ed. However most of the for-profits try to deliver it in the context of required, degree-counted courses. Community colleges charge tuition to students for remedial courses that don't count toward their degree. Once you factor the extra time and tuition for those courses in some of the tuition gap (although certainly not all; thats what state and local government subsidies are for) is closed.

• response to prior posting
• Posted by stopthegreed on September 7, 2010 at 2:00pm EDT

• Yes, actually, I do work at a for-profit institution, owned by a large corporate conglomerate, and I know exactly what I'm talking about. Everything I said was the truth (about MY institution), so it offends me that you questioned my credibility. I am not indicting ALL for-profits. As with the first poster, I'm only indicating my first-hand experience, first-hand knowledge.

• Get the facts
• Posted by Educator , Business on September 7, 2010 at 5:30pm EDT

• Dear "Stop the Greed," If you don't believe in the model at your place of employment, why do you stay; hypocritical. You are part of the problem not the solution. The fact is some of the "biggest" for-profit universities are taking positive steps to make corrections. No one is arguing schools can improve; all schools. I attended both on-ground and online universities and have a wonderful career. A great deal of the buzz is hype and rhetoric. I am focusing on the positives. I also teach online (last 10 years). I have seen many changes. My daughter graduated with her doctorate from a well-known traditional graduate school two years ago. I can tell you that many of her classes were a waste of time, energy and money. When I teach, I take my students seriously and provide whatever they need to reach their educational goals. I have many students in Afghanistan (military), rural students and those that work full-time jobs. They desire and are committed to continuing their education. The old adage prevails; you get out what you put in. That is the mark of a scholar. My two cents.

• It's Not That Simple
• Posted by Very Torn on September 7, 2010 at 7:00pm EDT

• I also work at a for-profit, and there are positives and negatives that I see on a daily basis. Unlike stopthegreed's school, we do not have instructors making $70K/year. In fact, much of what stopthegreed is saying sound like the talking points put out by the various law firms that are actively pursuing the for-profit schools in the name of the taxpayer. I don't see those firms working pro bono, but everyone has to make a living.

  I'm glad to see that someone from the non-profit side of the equation is recognizing that the for-profits need to get out in front and talk about the good things that are being done. So many of the students that are coming to for-profits are coming because they don't meet admissions criteria for public schools or have personal situations that don't work schedule-wise with pursuing a full-time education. The for-profit schools definitely need to clean house and meet acceptable standards, but part of the issue here is that non-profits, rather than recognizing that the for-profits are attempting to serve students they have not been able to, are regularly questioning the integrity and validity of for-profits. If we are all helping students, then we should find a way that everyone can do so while serving the needs of any student that wants to go on to college.

• Poor Assumption
• Posted by APD on September 7, 2010 at 10:15pm EDT

• Although I agree with many of the opinions already expressed, I do need to correct the original writer's incorrect assumption that those of us who work at market-driven colleges make few attempts to communicate with colleagues at non-profits and public institutions. Quite a few of us attend conferences, conduct research, and engage in other academic activities. Although I have not experienced much enthusiasm when I admit where I work at these gatherings, no one has thrown me out of the room or ignored my insights.

  I do believe that if we could offer research sabbaticals and other opportunities for our faculty we would be more accepted by the larger higher education community, but that seems like a dim possibility and we accept it as professors at many small schools accept that they can expect tougher course loads than colleagues at research universities.

  Perhaps we at for-profits need to form affinity groups so we will feel less alone at conferences, and might even attract some interested colleagues from outside our community.

• Data fun
• Posted by Former Student , Assistant Professor on September 8, 2010 at 9:23am EDT

• Let's look at the real issues here. We have a segment of our population who wants a college education and, for a number of reasons, 1) is not prepared for study at that level and 2) is not able to commit to the time/schedule most non-profits require. What are we doing to help these would-be degree holders? Is it helpful to admit them and then to not provide the support they need to succeed? I'm talking about both for- and not-for-profits. Many public colleges are cutting or have cut programs that once helped students to get up to speed (e.g., developmental English, math, etc.). While for-profits talk about serving this student segment, a content analysis of program offerings do not indicate these kinds of support courses as prerequisites- should we then believe that all of this catching up is happening in standard courses? As someone who teaches in the core, I find this hard to believe. We all need to focus on improving access to quality education in K-12 and providing real support for those students who we've committed to by accepting them. While colleges once admitted only students with some indication of graduation success, we seem to have opened our eyes to the many tuition dollars we were missing out on by barring the door to those who dreamed of a degree without the skills to make it, but whose money we could get in the one, two, or three years that it took them to find out that they were not prepared to succeed or that college was not their thing.

  For those students whose lives preclude a traditional bricks and mortar education, online or evening classes can be the key to an education. Let's make sure that they get one and not a useless piece of paper. I recall a year spent in a business program. I was put in courses that were required that had nothing to do with my education such as a student development course to teach me, at 27, how to pay my bills and to read a lease. That course cost money. While many people eschew the courses offered in a liberal college (don't get the "liberal" here confused with the political term, folks) thinking that it is as useless as that bill-paying course, I beg to differ. Now in my mid-40s and a teacher myself, I see that understanding some basics of history, psychology, art, and science have helped me to be "educated" as opposed to "trained" for life both in and out of the workplace. Of course, for many political agendas that rely on slight of hand and specious argument, a public trained beyond "put that part in this hole" is a burden. Again K-12 education needs to prepare citizens- everyone, even those who do not got onto college, to be critical consumers of information. Want an example? When I went, we were told that our placement office placed over 90% of graduates. This was true. What was not evident in the statement was that a good number of these students were working in pizza delivery, at the drugstore counter, or baking donuts.

  While we're on the subject of data, it would serve us all well to be critical of all data- that provided by any institution. Again, that requires an education- one that goes beyond technical training or professional development. As someone who went through and now teaches at a state institution, I was shocked at the online graduate education a friend was receiving. She wants to work in human resource development and went to a nonprofit online program that would allow her to be with her kids. I can only hope that the program was a watered-down version of what that state institution required of its traditional students. Research with human subjects without IRB approval, classes where teachers regularly "forgave" missing assignments or late assignments, and a majority of the grade coming from "discussion sessions" with no available rubric- no worries, everyone got an A. The teacher was quite proud of this as he announced it online. Apparently FERPA only applies to bad grades.

  Let's face it, our education system from K through BA needs help. It doesn't matter if you are a traditional, online, for-profit, non-profit, or whatever we come up with in the future- we need to focus on the student and the needs of the nation.

• To Educator
• Posted by For-Profit Faculty Member on September 8, 2010 at 2:30pm EDT

• You write, "Dear 'Stop the Greed,' If you don't believe in the model at your place of employment, why do you stay; hypocritical."

  I may be prejudiced, but the fact that you are in "Business" explains a lot about that attitude. Apparently, you believe that in capitalism workers are free to choose where they work. That is only true, of course, in what's called "employees' markets," not "employers' markets."

  Some FP faculties and staffs are, frankly, intimidated. Someone above mentions the "external monitors." As important as how vulnerable less prepared students are is this: there may be some smoldering labor issues going on in the FP sector.

  Among the "efficiencies" and "innovations" the FP sector can offer the traditionals, principal among them is the de-skilling and de-professionalization of faculty.

  There is the little matter, after all, of teaching workload, which leads to burnout. The FPs are fine with that because it's an employer's market in so many fields. Fine. Burn out and push out good, experienced teachers and bring in cheap, fresh meat and just retrain it. Good fundamentals from Wall Street's perspective. I submit that that may prove less sustainable than it looks. Surely, it is less than the best for students.

  As I've said elsewhere, I don't see why for-profit management should be exempt from the soul searching that we all should do in a corporate-dominated society, namely, the possibility that our good intentions are quite capable of masking nasty, predatory ones.