Resource: PBS Documentary: A Subprime Education
Study Questions for Lesson 2:
One. What is the value of a diploma from a FP college?
Employers are as likely to call a FPC applicant as much as a high school graduate, we read on page 28.
You could also have a fake college degree and get equal calls as someone with a FPC degree.
Employers have a preference for degrees from traditional institutions, not FP colleges.
Some employers have their “human resources professionals develop informal screening processes to weed out ‘diploma mills.’” So we can conclude a FP college degree carries a stigma.
The majority of students enrolled in FP colleges do not graduate, so we don’t have data on them of course regarding their job placement.
Two. What is the inherent conflict of interest of a FP college?
Students are placed in the backseat to profits even though FP colleges use the sanctimonious language of traditional colleges. As we read: “For-profit colleges ‘use the language of colleges and universities but operate like corporations or sole-proprietorships.’”
For-profit colleges can extract excess revenue and distribute it as profit, whereas not-for-profit colleges cannot.
Three. What is the growth of FP colleges and what is their demographic target?
Two million students were enrolled at FP colleges in 2010, up from less than 400,000 in 2000.
1 in 20 of all students attend FP colleges.
1 in 10 black students do.
1 in 14 Latino students do.
Typical FP college student is a woman and a parent.
Most FP college graduates are African-American.
The majority of FP college students will not have graduated in 6 years.
Since 2012, growth in FP colleges is on the decline.
A 2015 LA Times article shows that many FP colleges are “tanking,” with decline rates between 22 and 34%.
The growth of FB colleges is dependent on a “financialized” culture in which people don’t change money for goods; rather, they use credit and debt “to construct their lives and accouterments.”
Because FP colleges depend on consumers who must rely on debt, they are in a position to prey on the most financially challenged.
FP colleges also prey on people who are in a state of economic insecurity.
FP beauty colleges offering short-term certificates of a greater share of “brown people, more women, and more poor people.”
Four. Why are financially insecure consumers drawn to FP colleges?
Cottom writes: “The more insecure people feel, the more they are willing to spend money for an insurance policy against low wages, unemployment, and downward mobility. Those least likely to have an insurance policy that our labor market values are people for whom higher education has always been a long shot: poor people, single parents, the socially isolated, African Americans, the working class. When education researchers talk about the unmet consumer demand that for-profit colleges serve, they’re talking about inequality. “
Poor, vulnerable people are the prime target of a high-cost, high-risk, debt-driven system.
Five. What kind of telemarketing tactics did Cottom use as a recruiter? Are such tactics used by traditional colleges?
Using Accu-track, she had a script in which she had to lie, saying that you were returning a call because they had called the school. If they hadn’t, you asked if they thought about the school. You were required to get a name, any name, in order to make follow-up calls.
This was a high-pressure tactic for a 9-month program that costs over 15k.
Six. What kind of financial demands were put on the students?
We read that the students could not afford the $1,200 cash deposit or the $500-$700 monthly payments to stay enrolled.
Additionally, the students had to purchase their own equipment in excess of $350.
Working at both a beauty and technical college, not once has Cottom heard “for-profit college,” so she inferred it was a “dirty term.” The objective, she infers, is to confuse Americans so they do not the know the distinction between a nonprofit, traditional college and a for-profit college.
Seven. Are academics the ones who run for-profit colleges?
No. They’re “business guys.” They no nothing of education. They do know, however, how to engage people in high-pressure sales and close high-profit loans and graduate a small fraction with largely useless degrees.
Political Disagreement over FP Colleges:
"The Closing of the Republican Mind on For-Profit Colleges"
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