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This Executive Briefing was prepared exclusively for senior decision-makers. The perspective taken in this Briefing assumes the reader’s progressive organizational experience leading to a senior position in a college or university setting.
Over the next few days, you are likely to hear considerable discussion about, and be asked for your judgment on, the Frontline feature on for-profit higher education that aired on May 4, 2010.
This Briefing is not designed to summarize the Frontline feature. It is designed to place you behind the scenes with additional facts and consideration that may be of relevance in your work.
Nothing in what I am about to say should be construed as defending the abusive practices of a small number of outlier for-profits. Neither am I defending the uninspiring practices that seem to be emerging of late at more than a few of the for-profit colleges and universities. As a group, for-profits need to be overseen slightly differently than the publics and independents.
With the above background, here are a few talking points that may add to the inevitable sidebar regarding this controversial show.
Tuition by Type
While correctly citing the average for-profit tuition at $14,000 per year, Frontline failed to mention that the average private not-for-profit tuition is $26,000, and tuition at public universities averages $7,000. Public tuition is growing the fastest. Instead, Frontline compared for-profit tuition to tuition at community colleges, the most heavily taxpayer underwritten system, even though some of the surrounding discussion in the piece centered on a master’s degree. This is misleading reporting. Frontline could not have accessed tuition for the for-profits without also seeing the $26,000 figure for the independents. To most rationally impartial observers, this meaningful omission, combined with the comparison with community college tuition, provides evidence that objectivity was not a driving force in the production of this feature. Effectively, it renders suspect any soft interpretations that rest on intellectual honesty.
Types of Accreditation
Throughout the piece, Frontline seemed confused, itself, and therefore confused unknowing viewers about the differences between regionally accredited higher degree-granting institutions and nationally accredited career schools offering certificates and associate degrees in allied health, mechanical trades, etc. Enforcing this distinction would have helped viewers see where materially different excesses lay.
Taxpayer Costs
Although the piece sometimes spoke from the taxpayer’s point-of-view, it failed to mention that, per- student, public universities cost taxpayers the most. On average, public universities cost the taxpayers $9,500 per student per year, private universities cost $7,500, and for-profit insitutions actually make $500 for the taxpayers. (These are aging figures but the relations and general direction remain accurate.) I’m not suggesting that Frontline should have used these figures but it was intellectually dishonest to invoke the taxpayer’s perspective and fail to address the subordination costs of the different institutional types.
Taxpayer Loan Risk
Frontline emphasized taxpayer risk for student loans, even implying that taxpayers are on the hook for the full amount of the loans. The truth is that the taxpayer is mostly on the hook only in the case of a default. On this point, for-profits and community colleges serving the underclass have about the same (high) default rates. Similarly, for-profits and not-for-profits serving working adults have about the same (very low) default rates. Frontline’s reporting on this topic was confusing, misleading, and inaccurate. That said, student loans and gainful employment represent areas in which policy work remains, albeit based on facts not presented by Frontline.
Innovation at the For-profits
As Goldie Blumenstyk pointed out in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Frontline did not address the general topic of innovation in higher education. While individuals throughout higher education are constantly innovating, the guild structures of state and many private universities generally prevent these innovations from being integrated into the culture and business rules of those institutions. The for-profits are the leaders in system-wide implementation of innovation in content development and management, assessment, instructional best-practice, financial modeling, and efficiency management.
Online Education Equals Servers?
Perhaps the silliest portion of Frontline’s coverage was the protracted scene where the reporter stood in apparent amazement in a university’s server room and kept repeating juvenile remarks. Frontline appeared profoundly ignorant of modern pedagogy. Their lack of homework in this important area caused them to miss a golden opportunity to educate the public about the many advantages of online education.
Separately, Frontline seemed to conflate for-profit education with online education, at least to the confusion of the typical interested outsider. While online classrooms are growing faster than on-ground classrooms, InterEd’s readers know that the majority of for-profit higher education takes place on ground.
Time-to-Degree and Opportunity Costs
I wish Frontline had addressed time-to-degree, cost-to-degree, and the opportunity costs associated to these statistics. A six month graduation edge into even a $40,000 a year job will make up for a pretty large tuition disparity. In the typical public university, it can take five years or more to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. These delays, due mostly to poor supply management skills (it is taught, not practiced), quickly vitiate any tuition differentials.
Gainful Employment Double-standard
Frontline did mention that the Department of Education designed its “proposed gainful employment test” to apply only to for-profit schools and a few career programs at community colleges. This was a political move necessitated by the clear realization that many programs at public and private universities would fail the test.
Disgruntled Former Employees as a Source
One of the most fundamentally unethical aspects of Frontline’s the piece was its heavy reliance on a few disgruntled former students and employees as primary sources. Any senior decision-maker understands well how skewed and unreliable such perspectives are. Is it fair or reasonable to have one’s professional reputation defined by two or three dissatisfied former students or employees?
Department of Education Baiting
Frontline’s interview with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan was truncated, we think, because the Secretary declined to go along with the negative innuendo and excess implied by Frontline’s baited questions. In fact, Secretary Duncan he was generally positive on for-profits, noting only that the bad actors and excesses need to be dealt with.
Cheap Shots at the Underclass
From my vantage, a few of the for-profit career colleges need to be reeled in immediately or put out of business. Most career colleges, however, are excellent providers of a path out of poverty for students that no one else wants or will admit into their programs. It is a cheap shot to criticize schools that developed a model to serve the underclass – a tough audience on many counts – based on an imperfect record in serving these students.
Unrecognized Elephant
The most irresponsible aspect of the Frontline show was it’s failure to address the big question regarding the rapid rise of the for-profits. Why? Instead of facilitating discussion around the question, “Why are these schools growing so rapidly?†Frontline chose to portray students as unintelligent dupes, yielding to sales tactics, and incapable of making wise choices. Frontline failed to point out that most of these students are adults, most of whom hold responsible jobs, have families, and make decent decisions in matters affecting their personal and professional development.
Ignored by the Industry
Perhaps wisely, most for-profit universities chose not to participate in this project. University of Phoenix cited and documented Frontline’s dishonesty in setting up the piece as the reason it declined further involvement.
Does It Matter?
The obvious response to poor journalism such as this is “Does one public television news program matter to people concerned about higher education?” After all, the program likely did not change the minds of any of the stakeholders in the current discussion.
At the end of the day, I think it does matter. When the public is misinformed in this particular way, it harms our central mission: to encourage all sectors of higher education to engage in badly overdue modernization and fundamental restructuring. Arne Duncan believes we need all of the institutional types, including for-profits, to address President Obama’s challenge to become the most highly educated nation by 2020. I agree.
Robert W. Tucker, President and CEO of InterEd, Inc., has been leading innovation in higher education since 1986.
