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I\u2019m generally pro-capitalism\u2014it\u2019s no utopia, but never promises as much, unlike socialism which does, although typically ends in mass murder, and usually begins and operates on mass murder as well\u2026a utopian corpse-filled desert at best.<\/p>\n
Anyway, capitalism is usually better, but higher education stands in stark contrast to such a claim. \u201cFor-profit\u201d colleges are quite often rip-offs, while schools not blatantly trying to get a profit are less often scams.<\/p>\n
The reason for this is the student loan scam, which pays for accredited \u201ccollege credits\u201d without any concern for education. So, for-profits are really all about extracting student loan money; in this regard they are vastly more efficient than the not-for-profit schools.<\/p>\n
Still, the justified vile reputation of \u201cfor profit\u201d schools has been cutting into the plundering of student loan money, and so these schools have been steadily hiding themselves as non-profits.<\/p>\n
I discussed this before, but the article was so anti-Trump that it distracted from the information. The Huffington Post, another CTRL-Left hate media source (not being judgmental here, just considering the source), further discusses the phenomenon of for-profits disguising themselves, and amazingly enough does a good job\u2026so good that I\u2019ll have to reconsider Trump\u2019s hand in all this.<\/p>\n
The Creeping Capitalist Takeover Of Higher Education<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Today, the country\u2019s best colleges are an overpriced gated community whose benefits accrue mostly to the wealthy. At 38 colleges, including Yale, Princeton, Brown and Penn, there are more students from the top 1 percent than the bottom 60 percent.<\/em><\/p>\n Before going further, I\u2019ll point out, this one time, the obvious slants in the article, such as the above. Yes, certain schools are \u201cfor the rich,\u201d and so will have more students from wealthy families than from poor families.<\/p>\n HuffPo will often try to make something out of this, but it\u2019s utterly irrelevant. Amongst Lamborghini owners, there are more from the top 1% than the bottom 60%, right? Amongst multi-million-dollar mansion owners, there are more from the top 1% than the bottom 60%, right? Amongst drinkers of $1,000 bottles of wine, there are more from the top 1% than the bottom 60%, right?<\/p>\n All of those are bleeding obvious, right? But driving cars, living in houses, and drinking alcoholic beverages are all things nearly everyone does. There will always, always, be things the rich can buy which the poor cannot\u2026it\u2019s rather the definition of being rich. Anyway, HuffPo has a slant, and I\u2019ll try to avoid much of their class hatred\u2014they\u2019re called a \u201chate site\u201d for a reason–while getting to the relevant things.<\/p>\n The U.S. now has more student loan debt than credit card debt\u2014upward of $1.5 trillion. Nearly 40 percent of borrowers who entered college in the 2003 academic year could default on their loans by 2023, the Brookings Institution predicts.<\/em><\/p>\n The above are perfectly reasonable numbers, and I quote them here just for reference and emphasis. The default rate is almost certainly understated\u2014there are many \u201cloan deferment programs\u201d which are de-facto defaults, but technically not so.<\/p>\n It also doesn\u2019t explain why colleges have failed to take advantage of the best opportunity to radically drop the price of a good degree that I\u2019ve seen in 15 years of watching and reporting on the industry. This opportunity doesn\u2019t have the daunting price tag of worthy proposals like \u201cfree college.\u201d It doesn\u2019t require any action from Congress at all.<\/em><\/p>\n The opportunity referenced above is \u201conline education,\u201d and the article spends some time discussing it. I actually was one the first to help a scammy state university offer online courses (in 1999), and I apologize for it (again). HuffPo is correct, online classes really should be much cheaper than traditional, \u201cbrick and mortar,\u201d courses, because there\u2019s minimal overhead once the course is developed (takes 3 months, tops, to do so\u2014I\u2019ve done it at least half a dozen times now).<\/p>\n The courses should also be cheaper because they aren\u2019t worth a damn thing. Sorry, the level of cheating and fraud in most online courses (I\u2019ll say \u201cmost,\u201d but my eyeballs put it at near 100%) is staggering, and employers have long since learned not to give much credit for such courses, even if the college will.<\/p>\n While traditional courses are limited by the size of a lecture hall, online courses can accommodate thousands of people at a time.<\/em><\/p>\n While HuffPo misses it, of course, the above is the core of why these courses are worthless. The professor with 1,000 students can\u2019t possibly assign papers, can only give multiple choice tests\u2026and has absolutely no idea if the person taking the test is his student, or didn\u2019t just buy the answers to the test in advance (sites sell such for just a few dollars). But HuffPo looks at this as a benefit of online education!<\/p>\n So far, colleges have been more aggressive in launching online graduate programs.<\/em><\/p>\n The reason for the above is the student loan scam has basically no limit to what the school can rake in on graduate programs\u2026massive profit margin there, I assure you, and a big part of why, when we see people with huge debts ($50,000+), they usually bought themselves an online graduate degree.<\/p>\n This is because many colleges don\u2019t actually run online programs themselves. They outsource much of the work to an obscure species of for-profit company that has figured out how to gouge students in new and creative ways.<\/em><\/p>\n The above is key for how for-profit schools can hide. They associate themselves with state\/non-profit schools (where regulation\/oversight is lax), and then rip off students who get to say they have credits from a prestigious school, even though all they have is a crummy online course of dubious value, taken from a sub-contractor raking in profits.<\/p>\n The article discusses in detail a particular entrepreneur, who was only too happy to discuss how he made millions capitalizing on Princeton\u2019s prestige (the admin there, like everywhere else, are primarily involved in selling such prestige in exchange for more money in their pockets):<\/p>\n \u2026decided to get Princeton itself, or an equally prestigious institution, to lend its name to online degrees instead. He would focus on graduate schools, where admissions standards are opaque. He would provide all of the upfront capital. He\u2019d do the digital marketing and hire course designers and produce the videos of lectures and the software that allowed students and faculty to interact live online, with worldwide 24\/7 support. In return, the colleges had to give him 60 percent of the tuition. This was still a good deal for them, since 40 percent of something was better than 100 percent of the nothing they had before.<\/em><\/p>\n I\u2019ve been involved in things like the above, taking a few hundred bucks, flat fee, in exchange for producing a product which they\u2019ll turn around and sell endlessly for tens of thousands of dollars. Yeah, I screwed up, although it pales next to the mistake I made when I was a teenager, trusting a doctor\u2019s advice which eventually and directly is responsible for my cancer. I do envy people who can honestly say they have no regrets\u2026<\/p>\n Like any good businessman, the guy is utterly ruthless:<\/p>\n \u201cThe key insight was to take the systems from for-profits that were actually good … married to the goodwill and good quality of the best traditional schools,\u201d he says. \u201cThat is virgin snow.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n If the \u201cleaders\u201d running our schools had any integrity and guarded that \u201cvirgin snow\u201d instead of pimping it out the better to stuff their own pockets, this whole scam could have been shut down immediately.<\/p>\n Yeah, that\u2019s a quite unreasonable \u201cif.\u201d More next time\u2026<\/p>\n www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"