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It really is a wonder what makes a news cycle. A few dozen Muslims get killed by a Leftist lunatic in New Zealand, and it\u2019s all over the US news, and they can\u2019t even get the political affiliation of the self-proclaimed terrorist right. Meanwhile, about a dozen Christians are killed every day just for being Christians<\/a>\u2026and not a peep.<\/p>\n Stumbling over to higher ed, I want to talk about the nation\u2019s largest university: University of Phoenix. These guys used to be relentless with their ads, although they still advertise on TV quite a bit (as an aside, I wonder if the next generation will even know what \u201cTV\u201d stands for\u2026\u201da streaming service where you can\u2019t completely control what you watch or when you watch it? No way it existed!\u201d).<\/p>\n University of Phoenix Collapse Kept From Public Scrutiny, As Ads Continue<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n College enrollments have been falling nationwide. Most of this drop is at the for-profit schools, and for good reason: while degrees in general are grotesquely overpriced, for-profit degrees are extra excessively expensive. Revenues at UoPhoenix are down about 60%, leading to many firings of teachers and staff (unlike state schools, a for-profit will actually fire staff when revenues fall).<\/p>\n Before moving back to the media silence on this \u201ccatastrophe,\u201d I want to explain a bit what\u2019s happening at University of P.<\/p>\n One of the problems of schools of this size is the economy of scale when it comes to cheating. Back when classes were small, it was tough to find someone to do your homework for you, particularly in the advanced courses. I mean, sure, you could someone to do \u201cCollege Algebra\u201d easily enough, and Calculus 1 wasn\u2019t so bad\u2026but by the time you get to multivariate calculus or third year statistics? Well, the people that could be tutors for that are either teaching, or working jobs in the real world. To hire them to do your work, you\u2019d have to pay real money and plenty of it, because the work your class has assigned only applies to the people in your class\u2026labor intensive for an already established professional, and he\u2019ll charge for it.<\/p>\n But UoPhoenix standardizes everything, so now you\u2019ve got a thousand or more people taking a class, the same class every semester with the same assignments. One guy can do the work, and sell it to dozens of students, lowering the cost\u2026assuming it\u2019s not just PowerPoint\/multiple choice stuff. I\u2019ve seen sites selling the answers\/coursework for the entire UoPheonix catalogue for amazingly low prices.<\/p>\n And here\u2019s what happened: the whole point of UoPhoenix was to supply degrees so people could get better jobs. Noble enough, and it happened. But now management, with such degrees, knows those degrees are bogus, and warns their own employees away from them, as well as doesn\u2019t hire such degrees.<\/p>\n University of Phoenix made quick, massive, bucks from the student loan scam, but because they prioritized profits over integrity, quantity over quality, they\u2019re now imploding, bringing down other \u201cfor-profit\u201d schools with them.<\/p>\n But there is no story, so far, in the news about the collapse of America’s largest university<\/a>, because confirmable information is difficult to obtain. The University of Phoenix media room does not return calls or emails. And the culture of silence<\/a> at the school prohibits the truth from coming out.<\/em><\/p>\n To be fair, the \u201cculture of silence\u201d is hardly unique to University of Phoenix, as the constant stream of scandals from our other universities, revealed after years of protection via silence, indicates.<\/p>\n But in any event, this is our nation\u2019s biggest university, and it\u2019s failing, failing hard. It was founded in 1976, before the student loan scam became integral to higher ed, but once that student loan money became available it engorged itself more than any other school (and that\u2019s not a low bar by any means!). It\u2019s now dying, and the gluttony which allowed it to reach such size is as much a factor here as it is for a 600lb human dying of heart disease.<\/p>\n In 2007, the limitations of online education, the adjunctification of labor, and the University of Phoenix became more evident in a New York Times article that revealed the school\u2019s subprime graduation rate.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t just the fraud which killed it, as the very loose rules which allowed student loans permitted the school to enroll basically anyone with opposable thumbs, raking in the student loan money from \u201cstudents\u201d who had no interest in academics and no chance of ever completing a degree program.<\/p>\n In a scheme called \u201cThe Matrix\u201d, enrollment representatives were rewarded for meeting enrollment numbers. And with that, enrollment representatives would do almost anything to get asses in classes. Apollo Group\u2019s CEO Todd Nelson took the school to its highest numbers. But these numbers would come at a cost. The school faced enormous pressure from federal and state agencies.<\/em><\/p>\n I again point out UoPhoenix is hardly alone in such a business model.<\/p>\n The Federal government is now dimly aware that there\u2019s something wrong with the student loan scam, and I\u2019m confident it will soon be squinting at quite a few other schools with identical business practices.<\/p>\n This is what worries me about the media silence here. Yes, University of Phoenix was the 600lb gorilla, and it\u2019s now dying. But across the country we have plenty of schools, not just for-profits, not just for-profits disguising themselves as non-profits (an ever more common tactic\u2026I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll work), but even state-run schools, which did and do many of the same things University of Phoenix did and does.<\/p>\n If there was a bit more coverage of this collapse, perhaps they\u2019d have more chance to straighten up their act. I know, that\u2019s foolish, as the people looting our schools and student loans will probably just take golden parachutes rather than suddenly develop integrity\u2026but I think the effort should be made, nonetheless.<\/p>\n I got an Associates Degree in IT, focusing in Web Design, through their Online classes. My degree isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. I didn’t learn anything really useful, and when I got my degree is when GoDaddy got really big within the next year, so I wasn’t able to get a job making websites.<\/em><\/p>\n I wondered why some of my classmates were still in school. I had one group project where one group member literally copied and pasted his entire section. He didn’t see anything wrong with that. The other group members said to leave it even though it was a group grade. I redid his section before submitting it, letting the teacher know what happened. The student was not kicked out or even suffered anything more than a bad grade on that one assignment. Many classmates couldn’t use the spell check built into the class board, even though the first class, which was mandatory, was showing how to use everything including the spell checker.<\/em><\/p>\n Yes, the above comes from a \u2018Phoenix student but\u2026plenty of students at other schools can tell similar stories, and I\u2019ve been at schools where, absolutely a student who cheated at this level would barely have a penalty for being caught. The reason of course, is teachers who punish cheaters get penalized, as I\u2019ve documented before<\/a>.<\/p>\n When America\u2019s largest university shutters its doors, we\u2019ll have yet another big mess\u2026why does it need to be such a surprise to the American people when this happens?<\/p>\n www.professsorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"