Reinventing Higher Education: The Promise of Innovation by Ben Wildavsky

Author:Ben Wildavsky [Wildavsky, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
Published: 2011-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Proprietary Schools

Proprietary schools have grown rapidly since their students became eligible to receive federal Pell Grants. In 2007 to 2008, students at proprietary schools received 19 percent of all federal financial aid funding.40 Four-year institutions account for 57 percent of proprietary schools, two-year schools account for 24 percent, and less-than-two-year programs account for 19 percent.41 As we have seen, proprietary school students are older and more likely to be minority and female than are students in public institutions. In addition, a significantly larger fraction of proprietary students attend full-time than do students at public institutions.

According to reported federal data, graduation rates for two-year proprietary schools are better than those in public institutions. The most recent IPEDS data are that 22 percent of public and 59.7 percent of proprietary school students receive their credentials within three years of entry.42 These figures are biased against public institutions because they only include full-time students, and some observers have expressed concern that the figures are subject to some manipulation, for example, by changing the status of students in trouble to part-time so that they are not included in the IPEDS data. Nonetheless, other observers agree that at least some proprietary schools perform better than does the average public institution, likely because of the more tightly focused program and the more extensive support the proprietary schools provide.43 However, the comparison to public community colleges may also be unfair, given that a higher percentage of for-profit students are older and attend full-time. Although some researchers argue that the profile of students in the two types institutions is similar, these patterns cast significant doubts on that argument, while also reinforcing the point that full-time attendance is desirable and should be encouraged.44

Given their growth rate and their apparent success with many students, proprietary schools seem to represent an important alternative to public community colleges. However, three considerations counsel against becoming too optimistic. First, the growth rate in percentage terms notwithstanding, proprietary schools remain small compared to the community college universe and are thus unlikely to exert a great deal of impact on the distribution of outcomes. Second, proprietary schools are much more costly than community colleges, a fact that both limits their range and also helps explain their success. And third, there are serious reasons to worry about how well a significant minority of proprietary schools treat their students.

As we saw in table 5.1, two-year and less-than-two-year for-profit schools add up to less than 10 percent of public community college enrollment. This is not trivial, but it is hard to say that these schools represent a significant alternative.45 Another way of seeing this is to note that proprietary schools get almost no enrollment from graduating seniors: 18.8 percent of graduating seniors went to public community colleges and only 1.4 percent to private ones.46

The second problem with relying to any great degree on proprietary schools is their cost. Whereas public postsecondary schools receive only 30 percent of their revenue from tuition, proprietary schools rely on tuition for 88 percent of their revenue.

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