New England Board of Higher Education » for-profit colleges

Among Latest Comings & Goings, Meotti Named Interim Chief of New Conn. Regents

John O. Harney — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 18:05:17 +0000

Connecticut Higher Education Commissioner Michael P. Meotti, a NEBHE delegate, was named interim president of the the state's new Board of Regents of Higher Education. Under the state's recent education reorganization, the Regents will serve as the board for the community colleges, state universities and Charter Oak State College, as of Jan. 1. 2012.

****

Vermont State Colleges Chancellor Tim Donovan announced that Steve Gold of Montpelier was appointed interim president of Lyndon State College, succeeding Carol A. Moore who retired after 13 years of service at Lyndon. Gold has served at commissioner and deputy secretary levels in both the Dean and Douglas administrations. Moore, a NEBHE delegate since 2002, wrote recently for NEJHE about college retention.

****

Harris N. Miller resigned after four years as president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, whose nearly 2,000 member institutions enroll 1.5 million students. Over the past year, the sector has faced increased scrutiny from Congress and the Education Department and stepped-up criticism from advocacy groups.

****

Emmanuel College appointed Joyce A. De Leo, currently chair of the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology at Dartmouth Medical School, to become Emmanuel's vice president of academic affairs on Aug. 1.

DC Shuttle: Regulating For-Profit Colleges, Skills for America’s Future and Other Higher Ed News from Washington

John O. Harney — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:00:49 +0000

Republican senators boycotted a Tuesday hearing of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) which was called to discuss recruiting practices at for-profit colleges. Ranking Member Michael Enzi (R-WY) said in a letter that “until the Majority demonstrates a sincere willingness to hold fair hearings on higher education, we will not participate in any hearings on this issue.” The administration and HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) have been pursuing increased regulation of the for-profit sector, most recently via the Education Department’s new “gainful employment” rules. The rules would withdraw federal funding from college programs which do not meet standards on student loan repayment and students’ debt-to-income ratio. While the regulations apply to vocation and training programs at any college, many consider them to be targeting for-profit colleges. Pauline Abernathy of The Institute for College Access and Success testified that 95% of for-profit students take out loans and are “at least twice as likely” to default on their loans compared to students at other private and public colleges. Sen. Harkin said that he considers the gainful employment measures to be “a modest first step, but I think it’s going to take a much more aggressive policy.” Members of Congress from both parties as well as industry groups have warned that the rules will lead to fewer higher education options for the underserved and nontraditional students who make up a large percentage of the enrollment at for-profit universities. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter highlighted the changes to the most recent version of the gainful employment rules, which would suspend federal financial aid only after the standards had been failed three times over four years. “We’re giving career colleges every opportunity to reform themselves, but we’re not letting them off the hook,” she said. The rules will go into effect on July 1, 2012.

On Wednesday, President Obama announced the expansion of the Skills for America’s Future initiative to include new partnerships between private industry and community colleges. “The irony is even though a lot of folks are looking for work, there are a lot of companies that are actually also looking for skilled workers,” the president said. “There’s a mismatch that we can close.” The new partnerships will create mentoring programs, scholarships for engineering students, opportunities for manufacturing skill-development before college, and an online resource center to connect workers with job opportunities that match their skills, among other initiatives. Included in the workforce drive is a new credentialing system endorsed by the National Association of Manufacturers which will award certificates to 500,000 students to help them find jobs in the manufacturing sector. The credential will be applicable across all manufacturing sectors and may be combined with other training toward an associate degree. Administration officials praised the manufacturing sector for its role in the economic recovery, noting that over 230,000 jobs have been created since 2010.

Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher and research arm of Education Week, launched the 2011 edition of their annual Diplomas Count report this week. The report found that the national high school graduation rate was 71.7% in 2008 (the most recent year for which data was available), a significant increase from the previous year’s 68.8%. Education Week officials noted that rapid increases in graduation rates in urban districts had driven the national average up, but rate were trending upward across the country with the exception of certain concentrated areas. The 25 school districts with the highest dropouts rates were responsible for one-fifth of the country’s dropouts overall. Of the New England states, only Rhode Island fell below the national average with a 69.7% graduation rate. Vermont, with 82.7%, had the second-highest graduation rate in the country after New Jersey with 86.9%.

From the New England Council's Weekly Washington Report Higher Education Update, June 13, 2011. NEBHE is a member of the Council and will publish this column each week.

Founded in 1925, the New England Council is a nonpartisan alliance of businesses, academic and health institutions, and public and private organizations throughout New England formed to promote economic growth and a high quality of life in the New England region. The Council's mission is to identify and support federal public policies and articulate the voice of its membership regionally and nationally on important issues facing New England. For more information, please visit www.newenglandcouncil.com.

Unintended Consequences: An Uncertain Future for Distance Learning

John O. Harney — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:54:39 +0000

While most in the academic community know about the attempt to rein in the for-profits, few are aware of its collateral damage. In October, the Department of Education issued its Program Integrity Rules, intended to protect federal funds especially from those for-profit institutions with high student loan default rates. Well-intentioned though this was, the DOE dropped an inadvertent bombshell: All online programs without state-by-state approval to operate would risk losing their Title IV funds. The DOE had assumed that distance-learning programs routinely obtain state licensure in order to enroll students in that state. In fact, few institutions pay much attention to the home states of their online students—the very ubiquity of distance learning makes location irrelevant.

This set off a barrage of national meetings and attempts to lobby the DOE to retract this ruling. But the DOE, assuming that this rule merely reinforced the status quo, had boxed itself in, and couldn’t now suggest state approval should not be required. For the first time, the federal government would be enforcing state higher education licensure—the equivalent of making jaywalking a federal offense. While the risks might be low, the stakes were high; no institution would ever want to jeopardize title IV funds. Thus, schools have begun to inquire of each state (and territory) what would be necessary to be certified so that local residents might be able to enroll online. Only a very few institutions (and these are mainly large for-profits) ever considered that they might need each state’s approval in advance should someone from that state happened to join their online program.

Likewise, few states had thought much about out-of-state distance-learning programs, and few now have the resources or capacity to take on so many applications. Many state regulations were devised pre-Internet, and intended to protect their citizens from unscrupulous propriety schools or franchise campuses disconnected from their mother ship. The Internet can bring home campus faculty from leading institutions everywhere through online programs that are truly reflective of the academic standards of their institution.

While a small fraction of the states explicitly mandate that out-of-state distance learning must be licensed, a comparably small number explicitly exempt purely online programs. The majority are ambiguous: Their guidelines either ignore distance learning altogether or suggest that some sort of physical presence triggers state oversight. These triggers might include the presence of local student recruiting or advertising, in-state faculty teaching online that term, proctored exams, student field experiences, or even an institutional office or program completely unrelated to distance learning. Without numerical thresholds, one student or online professor moving to that state might suddenly trigger the need for licensure. A subtle change in a state’s regulations could also trigger the need for an institution to seek licensure.

To attempt to clarify the regulations, the DOE issued two “dear colleague” letters. The first reinforced the need for state approval, while the second postponed the day of reckoning for three years for institutions to pursue state-by-state approval in good faith.

How will the states now respond? The signs thus far seem to suggest that some will shift towards exempting online programs to avoid how taxing this will be on their dwindling resources. Some states might band together to arrange reciprocity or regional approval processes. Other states could see this as a revenue-generating opportunity or a protectionist means of keeping out competing, carpetbagger academic programs.

How will academic institutions respond? Those already invested in distance learning have little choice: They must pay to play. They have no recourse but to commit whatever it takes to stay in distance learning. Depending on a school’s number of online programs, this can cost perhaps a million dollars initially—with some annual expenses continuing in perpetuity—along with countless hours of staff time. Some online programs are so predominately in-state that their schools might need to restrict future enrollment only to local students. The schools hurt most will be those with small numbers of online students distributed nationally across many online programs: Their costs to participate will be high and their revenues low.

The institutional winners will be those with the largest numbers of distance learning enrollments and the deepest pockets to pay whatever it takes to stay in business. The ultimate winner? In many cases, the very for-profits that the Department of Education was targeting in the first place. Why? This ruling effectively shuts the door on new entrants into the otherwise exploding world of e-learning.

The barrier to entry has just been raised if not locked. This ruling potentially solidifies the market share of the big players and unleashes them to grow significantly – at the expense of potential competition. These state-by-state upfront costs just to launch an online program will be stifling if not prohibitive. New, innovative online programs from high-quality institutions are far less likely to emerge. The public will continue to be wary of the integrity of distance education if America’s top institutions opt not to participate. Despite presidential rhetoric for increasing college completion rates, the administration has just made student access to quality higher learning all the more difficult and constrained the overall capacity of the nation’s institutions.

Distance learning most benefits the consumer, especially working students seeking part-time education. Online learning provides choices and educational opportunity never previously apparent to those who cannot relocate for their education. Distance learning brings e-commerce to higher education, with the adult learner as its greatest beneficiary. Distance learning had begun to make New England’s premier institutions available nationally and even globally. But, instead, we are now at risk that educational inequality based solely on where you happen to live will continue to prevail.

Jay A. Halfond is dean of Metropolitan College and Extended Education at Boston University.

Despite Bad Press and Financial Hits, For-Profit Colleges Could Be Key Source of Transfers

John O. Harney — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:59:28 +0000

In a recent article in Inside Higher Education, transfer expert Marc Cutright of the University of North Texas writes about the growing importance that four-year colleges and universities should place on students transferring from community college. Public colleges, led by community colleges, grant more than a half million associate degrees annually and the number grew by 27% over a decade. But what about that other sector seeing large enrollment growth: for-profit colleges?

In a year of generally bad press for for-profit colleges—ranging from high student loan default rates and declining confidence on Wall Street—the sector's enrollment is rising, particularly at the two-year level. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2009 6% of two-year enrollments were in for-profits, up from 5% the year before.

When you consider that for-profit two-year programs have a 60% graduation rate, compared with the 22% graduation rate for public community colleges, for-profits would only need a 27% share of students to produce as many associate degrees as community colleges. If for-profits increase their market share by 1% each year, this would happen in as few as 20 years.

Last year's was the largest single-year increase that the for-profits have seen in recent years, so that kind of continued growth is unlikely. However it does highlight the fact that this student population is growing and will needs to be considered as well.

For-Profit Colleges: Futile Degrees or Fruitful Employment?

John O. Harney — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 20:09:11 +0000

For-profit colleges such as the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University offer an alternative to traditional two-year and four-year non-profit institutions by focusing, if their rhetoric is to be believed, on learning “relevant material you can apply immediately to your workplace.” With the rise in unemployment and the difficulties college grads are experiencing securing jobs, for-profit colleges are able to leverage their practical approach to attract both traditional college-aged students as well as adult learners. Yet for-profits have their critics.

For-profit colleges offer the following reasons when claiming they are the most viable option for postsecondary learning:

Productive and timely career training programs that especially target low-income and minority students historically underrepresented in postsecondary education. As the University of Phoenix website states, “roughly 30% of the University’s 443,000 students are African-American and about 11% are Hispanic, compared to the national enrollment averages of 12% and 10%.”

Lower student-to-adviser ratios compared with community colleges, as well as higher rates of persistence and graduation. As Arthur Keiser told tampabay.com, his for-profit Keiser University produced a “graduation rate for 2009 [of] 72 percent, well above community colleges and many state universities.”

A distance learning option, that is, the ability to earn a degree online. As the University of Phoenix website states, distance learning allows one to create a “schedule that fits your life.” This is seen as a necessary option for adult learners with jobs, families and other obligations.

Still, many argue that such proprietary colleges do little in the way of offering meaningful degrees and instead saddle students with debt. Worse, students often do not realize what they are getting themselves into and end up defaulting on loans at higher rates than their peers. New York Times op-ed contributor Jeremy Dehn notes: “It’s disturbingly easy to get accepted [to for-profit colleges], receive thousands of dollars in loans and then flunk out with crippling debt and no degree to show for it.” Misleading marketing tactics and deceptive for-profit advisers are often to blame for such negative outcomes.

As a response, in July 2010, the U.S. Department of Education implemented the “gainful employment rule.” This means that federal loan money is rescinded to for-profit schools that fail to provide students with degrees that secure good career prospects. Just last week, the Obama administration released new regulations with respect to student aid in hopes of “protecting students from aggressive or misleading recruiting practices.” Additionally, such rules are aimed at increasing students’ knowledge about the financial aid process. Disseminating aid information in easily understood ways is an effort to decrease the amount of student loan debt carried.

However, some note that for-profit colleges provide access to postsecondary education for nontraditional students such as adult learners and career-changers by providing flexible hours and certificate programs. MyCareerCounts.org has started a campaign to “put the brakes” on the gainful employment rule, stating that such a proposal could “limit access to much needed career training for hundreds of thousands of students.”

And just recently, the New England Board of Higher Education at its “Reinventing the University” conference proposed that perhaps its usual audience of nonprofit and public educators could learn something useful from their for-profit counterparts. Representatives Rob Lytle of the Parthenon Group, Peter P. Smith of Kaplan, and John R. McKernan Jr. of Education Management Corp. were adamant about how their mission should not stand in opposition to nonprofit colleges, but rather, should be seen as two different means to achieve the same ends.

Yet with loan defaults disproportionately high for students enrolled in proprietary colleges—and the increasing number of graduates fr0m these institutions who are unable to find “substantial employment”—this is a hard argument to make, even for the most skillful marketers and recruiters.