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When the government shut down Corinthian<\/a>, it was a complete disaster. Now, it wasn\u2019t a disaster for the administration of Corinthian, they all got huge golden parachutes. It was an inconvenience for faculty, but they were all being paid starvation wages as adjuncts, so the loss of the minimal paychecks wasn\u2019t so bad, and they just moved on to the next fake school.<\/p>\n It was a disaster for the students. The students took out huge loans for this rip-off school, and are still on the hook for the loans, even though the school was shut down for fraud. Their course credits don\u2019t even transfer, even though the school was accredited, but accreditation is itself a fraud and no longer has anything to do with education.<\/p>\n It also was a disaster for the students who graduated from Corinthian in previous years: when your school is known to be so fraudulent that it\u2019s one of the very few our government has shut down for fraud\u2026it\u2019s tough to tell an employer your degree is worth much.<\/p>\n Even if a school isn\u2019t shut down for fraud, it\u2019s still a bad deal for the students when it closes. Between lost credit hours in transfer, and the sheer inconvenience of possibly having to move hundreds of miles to get into a comparable degree program\u2026it\u2019s a mess.<\/p>\n \u201cBut Professor Doom, schools close so rarely that this isn\u2019t a concern!\u201d is a natural response but\u2026I fear more schools will be closing soon, many more, and not just the small schools we\u2019ve been losing a few of every year. We\u2019re starting to see campuses now which are converged, controlled by Leftist Social Justice Warrior lunatics, and the first publicly noticeable side effect of convergence is the riots.<\/p>\n A few riots won\u2019t close a school, but people see the riots, and this alone tells the parents of prospective students: \u201cthere are violent and insane people here, send your kid to another school.\u201d We\u2019re already seeing this at schools like Missouri State, which closed 7 dorms because they\u2019ve lost so many students.<\/a><\/p>\n Even if the riots ever get under control, these schools are doomed. They\u2019re on the record as saying they\u2019re now dedicated to social justice, and indoctrinating everyone at the school into this ideology.<\/p>\n Perhaps becoming devoted to ideology is a good thing but\u2026our students are paying $100,000 or more to go the college now. For that kind of money, they\u2019re entitled to get something of value. Ideology can be learned for free, and has no market value. Once again, someone looking into schools like this is going to come to the conclusion that going to another school is a better option.<\/p>\n Now, when a school starts to die, it generally changes to try to survive. More marketing, putting in a climbing wall, or even improving their degree programs are all options, though sadly the latter is seldom on the table. Trouble is, a converged school can\u2019t make these choices\u2014ideology is so important, paramount to everything else, that nothing else matters. Even if they engage in a massive marketing program, the simple fact is they\u2019ll destroy themselves with marketing, as they\u2019ll simply publicize how dedicated they are to the ideology\u2026scaring away even more prospective students.<\/p>\n The only solution for converged schools is bulldozers. It might not be next year, but it\u2019s inevitable, and some of these schools are quite large. At some point, a university with tens of thousands of students and graduates will find itself shutting its doors for reasons which don\u2019t involve pure fraud.<\/p>\n Now what?<\/p>\n I find myself often looking to the UK for ideas and insights regarding US higher education. The Federal student loan scam, with all the strings attached, have made many American institutions nearly cookie-cutter copies of each other. While in many ways the UK is adopting our very corrupted system, they\u2019re still their own system enough that there\u2019s hope of some new, legitimate, ideas coming from \u201cacross the pond.\u201d Our higher education system is drowning in a bloated bureaucracy which cannot be the source of the new ideas no matter how many millions we give our Poo Bahs. Does the UK have any ideas for us? A recent article regarding issues in the UK might be a source:<\/p>\n Struggling universities will be shut down, not saved \u2013 it’s not fair for students<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Much like here, students are starting to drown in debt from their \u201cprecious\u201d education, and this in turn is leading prospective students away from higher education, lest they too become victims. It might not be quite the same as the fraud or convergence we have in the US, but the end result, a school closing for lack of students, is the same.<\/p>\n Like me, the author of the linked article realizes the big disaster here is the effect the closing will have on students. While he\u2019s discussing a near closing, he realizes we\u2019ve got some huge disasters here waiting to happen.<\/p>\n What does he propose?<\/p>\n \u2026outlined meagre protections for students at universities which are closing down, offering to oversee student transfer arrangements. ..<\/em><\/p>\n Wow, meagre protections? That\u2019s so much more than what we have here. Corinthian students, for example, got nothing, and I\u2019ve cited a few examples of students being crushed by loans for coursework they didn\u2019t know they enrolled for. Again, I\u2019m looking at fraud, but it\u2019s hard not to constantly go back to the fraud when considering the American higher education system.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume legitimacy. Why can\u2019t we install protections for students caught in a failing but legitimate university?<\/p>\n \u201cWe already have those protections through accreditation\u201d is a natural response\u2026but it\u2019s wrong. Yes, in the past, one of the main reasons for our system of school accreditation was to facilitate transfer of credits from one school to another\u2014it\u2019s the whole reason that, say, the syllabus for the College Algebra course at State University of East Coast has basically the same material as Expensive Private University of West Coast.<\/p>\n Of course, many campuses, especially community college campuses, are completely unhinged\u2014what\u2019s on the syllabus is unrelated to what actually happens in the course. Oh, wait, I didn\u2019t want to focus on the fraud here so\u2026moving on.<\/p>\n Accreditation used to allow for transfer but\u2026the rules for accreditation changed. Now, instead of allowing for easy transfer, accreditation is actually a roadblock\u2014accredited schools can\u2019t transfer more than 2 years of credits (this varies a bit by accreditor), so students in their 3rd year, or later, would still be greatly harmed by accreditation.<\/p>\n It\u2019s even worse than that, of course, as most schools don\u2019t come even close to allowing the upper limit, with many schools only allowing perhaps 24 credit hours to transfer\u2014this is about 20% of a degree, so not just advanced students, but any student with at least 2 semesters of college would be screwed by the university closing, as a matter of policy.<\/p>\n Having seen accreditation rules completely ignored many times in many ways, however, schools could just change their policies. In fact, the Federal government can fix this whole issue in one easy step:<\/p>\n Any school taking Federal student loan money must accept all transfer credits from any other school taking Federal student loan money.<\/em><\/p>\n And, just like that, the whole \u201cwe can\u2019t close the university, it\u2019d be a disaster!\u201d argument vanishes. Yes, the accreditors might have a problem with it, but seeing as they have no problem with massive systematic academic fraud (Hi UNC!), deeply immoral behavior (Hi Penn State!) or any of the other problems I\u2019ve highlighted in this blog, I don\u2019t see anyone paying much attention to their crying about my proposed rule. Bottom line, accreditation has been irrelevant for decades now, serving as nothing more as a co-conspirator with schools to skim that student loan money. Oh, wait, I\u2019m supposed to not talk about the fraud for a bit\u2026my apologies, it\u2019s hard not to mention fraud when discussing any aspect of our higher education system.<\/p>\n Perhaps my solution is too draconian but the bottom line is at some point we know a number of our big institutions will fail. Why aren\u2019t any of our leaders in higher education planning ahead to take care of students?<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"