The past four years have been busy ones for the Department of Education as it’s broadened its reach into higher education. But with all that activity, what have we learned, where are the gaps, and what should the administration’s agenda be for its second term?  No doubt, the administration has and will receive many suggestions (most uninvited), so I will keep it simple and focus on three areas—Continue Reading »

Prospective students, beware: the job placement rates that for-profit colleges are required to disclose remain as unreliable as ever. The Obama administration had a chance to ensure schools release more accurate data, but fumbled it. And judging from a notice that the U.S. Department of Education issued shortly before Christmas, the administration doesn’t plan to make another play on it anytimeContinue Reading »

See any similarity in these arguments?

…Neither Whitmire nor Rhee seems aware that social science research has demonstrated for many years that what families do, and the advantages or disadvantages that family income confers, have even more influence on academic performance than what teachers do. — Diane Ravitch

“The single best predictor of a student’s likelihood oContinue Reading »

The much-anticipated gainful employment regulations, which include important changes to how for-profit colleges are held accountable, were finally released today (for more on gainful employment see this ES report from 2010).

There’s grumbling on both sides about the final regulations. Proponents are upset over added leeway given to the colleges. And the for-profit sector, despite wContinue Reading »

At 27, after six years working on youth service-learning, literacy, and a variety of issues to strengthen community-based nonprofit organizations, I entered business school. In one way, it was an odd choice. I knew little about high finance and, growing up in the Gordon Gekko / Barbarians at the Gate / Bonfire of the Vanities culture of the late 1980s, harbored an almost instinctive distrust toContinue Reading »

A big selling points of for-profit colleges is their ability to offer programs with direct work force ties and to easily update these programs as employer demands change. It’s an attractive proposition for students–don’t waste time in unnecessary skills or majors and get the classes and skills you need in the subjects that employers want.

This talk about in-demand jobs Continue Reading »

While industry lobbyists cry wolf by claiming that proposed gainful employment regulations will destroy post-secondary options for poor and minority students, for-profit college earnings reports to Wall Street tell a different story. None of these companies is telling its investors that the new regulations will shut down their programs. Instead, their real concern is that fewer students are choContinue Reading »

Dig deeper into this morning’s Washington Post op-ed by Marc H. Morial, president and chief executive of the National Urban League, and you’ll find shockingly low expectations for how post-secondary institutions, funded almost entirely by federal student loans and grants, should serve poor and minority students. Morial writes:

The so-called gainful-employment rule…wouldContinue Reading »

Diane Auer Jones continues to use the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s Brainstorm blog as her own personal outlet for misleading commentary. In this instance, she writes that the proposed gainful employment rule would “reduce the value of higher education to a single metric—the starting salary graduates earns in their first jobs.” Maybe Ms. Jones hasn’t had time to read tContinue Reading »

Corinthian Colleges, which paid $6.5 million in 2007 to avoid a lawsuit alleging it misled students about career opportunities, is running full page newspaper ads warning that Gainful Employment regulations will cost 100,000 jobs and prevent a million students from going to college (see below). The ad campaign, which purports to defend students but instead seeks to instill fear, uncertainty, anContinue Reading »