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Private Sector Schools: Educating America’s Workforce

By U.S. News Staff

May 4, 2012 RSS Feed Print

President Obama has time and again touted the importance of higher education even stating our nation needs two million more college graduates in the next decade.  In fact, last week Obama dedicated significant time toward calling for college to be more affordable and accessible.

While Mr. Obama talks about the availability of higher education, skills development, and degree attainment, private sector colleges and universities are delivering on these items, while employing tens of thousands of Americans. 

For millions of nontraditional students, such as veterans, parents, and experienced workers, the constraints of a regular college schedule can make it difficult—if not impossible—to obtain a degree. Individuals working full time and supporting a family do not have similar needs or schedules to those attending typical four-year institutions who are oftentimes fresh out of high school. 

Private sector colleges and universities provide programs and curriculum tailored to the goals and lifestyles of non-traditional students. Career-oriented institutions offer classes online or at night, even during weekends allowing adults to work toward degrees, while maintaining a steady income and caring for their families.  

Further, private sector schools offer specialized degrees in high-demand industries. For instance, our schools educated nearly 40,000 nurses in 2009-2010, and more than six out of 10 allied-related healthcare professionals. Private sector colleges and universities provide course work and training in areas that are directly relevant to the future careers of its students allowing them to attain their degrees more quickly and prosper. The specialized nature of our schools, also gives students a leg up when competing against others for jobs, who have not received technical training.  

In today's economy, businesses have made it clear there's a shortage of skilled workers ready to fill job openings. This has left America's economy in a much more vulnerable position than it might otherwise find itself in.

Despite all these aforementioned benefits, critics and other naysayers, like Peter Fenn, who recently wrote in U.S. News & World Report on the subject, have been screaming for further burdensome regulations on private sector schools. These pundits demonize career-oriented institutions at every corner, but they almost always forget to mention that private sector colleges are already one of the most highly regulated sectors in all of education.

These regulations come at a great expense. More regulations lead to more bureaucracy. And in order to comply with all the new bureaucratic constraints, private sector colleges and universities incur more costs which make an education more costly and less accessible.

Detractors like Fenn blindly support more regulations on educational institutions and oftentimes place ideology and politics ahead of the needs of students and our economy. They ignore Department of Education statistics showing career colleges produce more than twice the number of graduates than community colleges for two-year degrees.

The facts are simple, career-oriented schools are educating America's next generation and helping secure our nation's economic vitality. It is common knowledge that a higher education degree greatly improves employment opportunities and income. And at a time of extended, high unemployment and economic hardship, we should not be denying anyone access to skills and training that will allow them to better their own future.

Rather than going on a witch hunt and calling for more burdensome regulations on a sector that is already heavily regulated, Fenn should recognize the important role private sector colleges and universities play in educating America's workers.

Steve Gunderson
President and chief executive officer
Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities

Tags:
education,
politics

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In twenty years, these private sector colleges may well have been the greatest threat to ever emerge domestically. They are eating up hundreds of billions of dollars and producing students who cannot find jobs and cannot pay back incredible student loans, loans which cannot be escaped. Add that to the Mitt Romney, who is a heavy, heavy recipient of private sector college and banking money, who would undue what limited regulations there are on making sure this kind of high-pressure predatory lending stays in check.

There will come a time when we look back on this Private Sector College Scandal as rivaling or even dwarfing the 2008 collapse. People can walk away from homes. They cannot walk away from student loans.

Jane Wenemeg of UT 12:35PM July 03, 2012

Mr Antonelli, you are 100% correct! I am a former student of Kaplan College, when I went into the campus I was lied to many time by my so called counsalar, High pressure sales agent!

I was told 80% of my credits would be transferable, when in fact 0 were. I was told they had an eighty-five % job placement service. when 0 % were placed from my class!I was told that 50% of the training program was "hands on" when inn fact less than 5% was hands on!! Most all of the students in my class of 28 had the exact same experience!

These schools are a big fraud and should be closed down and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!!

Jim Walsh of NV 4:28PM June 14, 2012

As an attorney representing hundreds of students defrauded by a number of for-profit vocational schools, which Steve Gunderson innocuously calls "private sector colleges" I have seen the predatory lending and deceptive misrepresentations made to many prospective students of these schools. When Steve Gunderson's group, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities convene in Las Vegas on June 20-22nd at the Mandalay Bay Hotel & Casino, there will no doubt be much focus on defending against the ability of students who were defrauded to make their claims together en masse and to gather defensive intelligence against states' Attorney General actions like Illinois' Lisa Madigan. But how much focus will be on: a) reducing tuition to make their programs competitively priced in comparison to community colleges, or b) ensuring the quality of the programs they deliver are on par or better than the public choice alternatives?

Buried in non-dischargeable, high interest debt by a number of these over-priced for-profit schools, many thousands of these students were misled into taking expensive courses with promises of "gainful employment" when it is clear upon examination that the value proposition of, say, an $18,000 8 month basic medical billing and coding course is, to be charitably characterized, dubious. For that price in tuition, after paying their monthly loan payment the typical graduate does not see much of an improvement in wages above minimum wage.

Many of these schools now protect themselves against any serious redress by those students who were defrauded, by systematically forcing individual arbitration, rather than a public court fight or face exposure for their misdeeds in a class action. Therefore, when fraud is committed on a large scale basis - such as widespread lies covering up the fact the "accreditation" touted by the school's sales people to prospective students is worthless (very often not discovered until years later and tens of thousands of dollars of debt later) when they later try to transfer to a community college or four year university - these corporations needn't be worried by any serious repercussions. After all, insulated from large claims without the availability of class actions and no teeth in the federal government's Gainful Employment regulations (no student can sue even when the school deliberately lies and exaggerates their past graduate's financial outcomes), individual students' claims are mere gnats and a negligible cost of doing business. Therefore, when maximization of profit rather than ethics are a primary concern, it pays to put more sizzle than steak on the plate.

The keynote speaker at the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities’ Annual Convention this June will be President Bush, whom I voted for and briefly volunteered in his presidential campaign. I sincerely hope President Bush will show more concern for providing serious educational products to students of those schools that provide a meaningful living, and not merely patting the schools on the back for making highly profitable investments for friends and people in the upper class. American education should always be about upward mobility. And from what I have seen, the vast cases of education products of for-profit vocational schools fail to enable their graduates to do so, but actually, incredibly, leave their students worse off than before enrollment.

Jeffrey Antonelli of IL 12:30PM May 11, 2012

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