A few passages about for-profit colleges

by David Safier

The recent issue of the Washington Monthly is devoted to higher education. One of the stories,The College For-profits Should Fear, is about the nonprofit Western Governors University, which I knew nothing about. Interesting read.

One of the most interesting sections was about for-profit colleges. First sit down, then read this passage about their recruiting techniques:

News accounts, most notably by Bloomberg’s Daniel Golden, described for-profit college recruiters bringing their hard sell to casinos, homeless shelters, and military barracks that housed veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury. To many observers, their practices were reminiscent of nothing so much as the tales of subprime mortgage brokers circa 2007, hustling lower-class Americans into adjustable rate loans for houses they couldn’t afford.

A paragraph later, the article talks about congressional hearings on the industry. Steve Eisman testified. Apparently he was someone who saw early the looming disaster from the subprime mortgage industry.

Among those who testified was the hedge fund manager Steve Eisman—who had served as the bluff, de facto hero of Michael Lewis’s nonfiction account of the financial crisis, The Big Short, because of his prescience about the subprime mortgage market. “Until recently, I thought that there would never again be an opportunity to be involved with an industry as socially destructive as the subprime mortgage industry,” he began. “I was wrong.”

Because of the Obama administration's watered down but still significant government regulations, the for-profit college industry has been forced to mend its ways when it comes to recruiting and offering expensive training for nonexistent or low-paying jobs. But the question remains, can a corporate ethos willing to heartlessly exploit its students to maximize its profits change enough to offer quality education whose purpose is to benefit its students?