"Gainful employment" -- a long-winded way of saying "job" -- usually is considered a good thing. To the for-profit higher education industry, however, gainful employment is a dirty word (OK, two dirty words) these days. The industry is spending big bucks to fight what it calls the "Department of Education's gainful employment rule," with heavy television advertising and full-page newspaper ads. (Note: such is the case in Washington DC, anyway. Sometimes I suspect we in the nation's capital are subjected to more paid political cause advertising than many other markets.)
When an industry association starts spending a lot of money to "inform the public" about an impending danger from the government, it's usually time to be suspicious. Of course we all know that our elected officials and government workers are constantly out plotting to do things against the public interest (don't we?), and we should appreciate the trade associations that are so assiduous in defending our rights (shouldn't we?). Not really, unless we're paranoid. Actually it's a better-than-even bet that the industry's real concern is either regulation they don't like, or something that might affect their profits.
So when I started seeing the blitz of ads against "gainful employment," run by the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, criticizing the power-crazed government's plan to restrict freedom of choice in education, I started to look into what might be the real problem.
It seems that a variety of studies have suggested a host of problems in the for-profit education sector: Foremost is generally higher prices than equivalent private nonprofit or government schools (for 4-year degree programs, the average for-profit student paid 31,000, but only 17,000 at private nonprofits and 12,000 at government institutions. Also, the APSCU schools' graduation rates are much lower; and degrees take longer.
We might agree that some of this difference is due to the different nature of the students in for-profit education -- many are working and devote only part time to studies; others don't pursue four-year degrees. But beyond these generic measures, the more serious problem may be one that investigative reporters have found: recruiters for the private schools often misinform prospective students about the type of education they will receive, or about the actual job prospects in the field they plan to study. (In one case I saw, convicted felons who did not hide their criminal records were told they could take courses and get jobs in police work or security.)
The Department of Education's planned rulings would tighten up some of these practices in order to keep people from being bilked. Seems reasonable to me. (You can see the DoEd's description of its plan at http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/department-track-implement-gainful-employment-regulations-new-schedule-provides-)
As in so many cases where abuses are discovered, the APSCU's reaction to its members' being called to task has been to deny the problem is widespread and to try to misrepresent what's being done to correct it. The industry says it's just a "few bad apples" and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan agrees. But the industry group leaves unsaid what, if anything, it would do to correct the problems; instead it just argues against any new regulation, while trumpeting that "the proposed rule would force thousands of programs to be shuttered and deny over two million students the opportunity to achieve their dreams."
Which begs the question: Gosh, if the abuses are limited to just a tiny sample of the entire private-sector education industry, why would the consequences of fixing them have such dire effects? And the second question: Why doesn't the APSCU outline its own procedures for correcting abuses? Or the third: Why didn't they have procedures in place earlier, so the government could survey the industry and conclude it was clean, well-policed, and needed no regulation?
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