Career College Association Advertisments in Politico

Below is a snapshot of one of our ads in Politico from earlier this week. If you've seen one of them, let us know. Also, feel free to share any thoughts on what you think of the ads in the comments section.

Defending For-Profit Colleges

T. Richard Fort is the CEO of ESM offers his estimation of the Denver Post's coverage of proprietary colleges:

Imagine a country in which only middle- to upper-class students get into college and access to higher education is severely restricted for lower income students. The disparity between classes would grow and the middle class would erode. No thinking person wants that.

The two articles in the Denver Post too heavily characterized an industry that is misleading students with promises of lucrative careers while ripping off taxpayers in the process. That is simply untrue. For-profit colleges provide much-needed access to quality education to all levels of society and fill a gap in higher education that otherwise would go unfilled.

There was a glaring omission in the articles. The career college industry has been impacted by the recession in positive and negative ways. When people are out of work, they tend to go back to school to upgrade their skills and prepare for new jobs when the economy recovers. This drives enrollments, particularly in career colleges. The recession is a far greater driver of for-profit college enrollments than the fact that enrollment counselors' salaries can change twice a year. If not, why are non-profit community colleges filled to the brim as well?

Community Colleges Borrowing Online Recruitment Best Practices of For-Profit Colleges

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery:

Individual community colleges can’t match the marketing budgets of for-profit institutions that plaster their regions with advertisements. So they’re exploring ways to fight back by going national, pooling their efforts to promote online programs in a new marketing collaboration that was announced Sunday at a distance-education conference here.

The discussions, led by the American Association of Community Colleges, represent a fresh spin on an older strength-in-numbers distance-learning vision called the International Community College, which failed to get off the ground after four years of planning.


The distance-education landscape has changed drastically since that telecourse project. Both for-profits and an increasingly aggressive group of traditional four-year colleges now often recruit by purchasing “leads” on potential students that are parcelled out by online portals – a game community colleges have generally not joined.

The new national collaboration might look at how community colleges could exploit that tactic, perhaps by putting up a lead-generation Web site, said Pamela K. Quinn, an association board member who is provost of the distance-learning arm of the Dallas County Community College District.

Planning is at an early stage, she said, but one outcome could be an online clearinghouse that could showcase programs that train workers for particular jobs – say, veterinary technician. The project would cost “millions,” Ms. Quinn said in an interview Sunday at an e-learning conference put on by the Instructional Technology Council, an affiliate of the national community-college umbrella group.

Institutions participating in the talks include the Dallas district, Foothill-De Anza Community College, Rio Salado College, and Northern Virginia Community College.

National Journal Article Misses the Mark on Career Colleges

The following is authored by CCA President and CEO Harris N. Miller:

Re: "College Recruiting Scrutinized: Loopholes that allow paying extra for putting 'asses in classes' could soon be closed," Feb. 13

I was incredibly disappointed by the unfairly negative portrayal of career colleges in Eliza Krigman’s article on student recruitment.

For instance, she asserted that the "explosive success" of career colleges "raises questions about quality control." But she did not provide any sort of evidence or expert testimony to support the claim. In fact, the graduation rate for four-year career colleges is comparable to other four-year institutions while the graduation rate for two-year programs is more than twice that of community colleges, according to the Department of Education. For career-minded students, the ultimate test of quality has to be the marketplace. Nationally accredited institutions in our sector on average place 70 percent of graduates in field.

Ms. Krigman also made much of the fact that career college students represent "a disproportionate share of loan defaults." But she failed to explain, or even hint at, the reason for this. The default rate is tied to the demographics and socioeconomic status of students and whether or not they graduate -- not the type of institution. Cohort default rates for college dropouts are the same, regardless of the type of institution they attend. Career colleges serve a much higher percentage of low income and minority students than traditional colleges, and we are very proud of this fact. But offering education to students who would otherwise be shut out of college means we’ve traditionally had a higher default rate than institutions that primarily serve wealthier students. That said, career colleges are working hard to reduce defaults by assisting students in meeting their financial obligations -- just as we are working hard to help them find jobs upon graduation.

Finally, Ms. Krigman quoted me as saying that the State Department conducts regular audits of career That would certainly be news to me. To be sure, I said the Department of Education and various state agencies and their accreditors.

Jeffrey Selingo Defends Chronicle of Higher Education Against Attack From Stephen Burd

In the comments of Burd's latest screed against proprietary schools, Selingo defends the Chronicle against the charge that the paper treated the University of Phoenix with kid gloves because they sponsored an event held by the paper:

I've been in the journalism business long enough to know that no matter what you write about a particular issue or person, reasonable people will disagree about whether the story was balanced. So as the editor of The Chronicle, I'm not here to comment on Steve’s critique of our package on for-profits. I’ll let readers make that judgment for themselves based on our long record of covering the industry.

But there is one point in Steve’s critique that I feel compelled to address: the idea that the Chronicle is selling out to advertisers. In my 13 years at The Chronicle, I’m proud to say that we have never changed content to please an advertiser. Indeed, Steve knows this better than most reporters since his aggressive reporting on Sallie Mae while he was at The Chronicle led the company in part to pull its advertising account on at least one occasion.

The Leadership Forum we held last year, and the sponsorship of it by the University of Phoenix, was no different than any of our other paid-advertising relationships, except that it was a face-to-face event rather than a static ad on a newspaper page or on a Web site. And, while the link in the above item doesn’t show this, Phoenix was not the only sponsor of the event. Were Phoenix officials able to talk to Chronicle reporters at the event? Sure, but so were the hundreds of other college officials in attendance. Phoenix officials did not get any special access to reporters and editors.

It’s no different than the dozens of college presidents and other college officials who visit our reporters and editors in our offices in any given month. Some of those institutions, mostly non-profits, are also large advertisers, many probably much larger than Phoenix; others never advertise with us. We don't know the difference, nor does it matter to us. Since our founding more than 40 years, we have always covered what we feel is newsworthy and interesting, without regard to those that advertise with us. That is a bedrock principle in our DNA and will remain so.

Stephen Burd Can't Understand Why The Chronicle of Higher Education Should Be Fair to For-Profit Colleges

The following is response from CCA President and CEO Harris N. Miller to Stephen Burd's latest post:

In his latest posting about The Chronicle of Higher Education, bloggist Stephen Burd bemoans a lack of balanced reporting about career colleges by his former employer.

To start with, Stephen worrying about a lack of balance seems as odd as Olympic superstar Apolo Anton Ohno worrying about getting his next date.

So let’s look at his argument. I would call it logic, but he has none, as usual. He must have missed that course at the small elitist institution that his parents probably paid for him to attend.

From our point of view, we found the article, “For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape,” published in The Chronicle of Higher Education to be a fair and balanced piece that included some of our sector’s challenges in addition to our strengths or, as my mother used to say was “complete” – warts and all.

When Stephen was a journalist at the Chronicle of Higher Education, we are to believe it was a bastion of fair play and totally objective reporting. But years later, when he’s a page-view hungry blogger, and a career college sponsors one event run by the Chronicle, we now are to understand the reporters and the editors are being bought off by evil capitalists.

Stephen denies he is making an inflammatory accusation at the same time he makes it – a trick used by some bloggers to increase page views, the facts be damned. If he really does not believe the Chronicle’s news staff is subject to advertising pressure, then why even raise the issue? No one else did. Stephen is demonstrating a trait of ideologues—make ad hominem attacks, when the facts are against you.

Having led a small but persistent chorus of career college critics for many years, Stephen seems to be concerned that he is no longer preaching to the choir. He’s correct. Increasingly he is alone in the choir. From a higher education policy and analysis perspective, Stephen and his elitist thoughts about career education are becoming marginalized. In a tight economy, others are looking for solutions while Stephen continues to look for a punching bag. He claims to be looking out for the little guy just as he maligns their education. Oddly, where others in higher education see outcomes worth emulating, Stephen sees only outrage. His potshots at the sector are always taken from the margins, not from the mainstream.

For instance, Stephen claims career colleges are not student focused because there are many former career college students stuck with unmanageable debt loads for “training.” His use of coded language aside, there are many students in every walk of higher education dealing with difficult debt loads, not just career college students. The overwhelming majority of student debt owed today by students who have borrowed to attend institutions of higher learning is owed by students who attended traditional higher education institutions. The overwhelming majority of students in default—by numbers and by dollars—are those who have attended traditional higher education institutions. So logically isn’t this a far greater issue than the smaller numbers of career college students who fall into the same category?

He calls high default rates evidence of students not being well served. High default rates reflect only a sour economy and a student population where over 62 percent of the students at for-profit schools (nearly 71 at two-year schools) are at or below 200 percent of the poverty level. Similarly situated students at community colleges and minority serving institutions have comparably high default rates, as organizations such as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have explained repeatedly. Of course, again, not too many of those students are at Stephen’s alma mater. But why would our country want to promote lower income people and working adults getting a postsecondary education? Stephen should call the President and Congress and talk them out of that crazy “expanding access” idea.

But Stephen’s charge that graduates of career colleges are left stranded? Hardly. Career colleges represent the one higher education sector that worries about getting students placed in jobs after graduation, and focuses on the relationship of their education to their careers from day one, without apology. How about those placement rates for traditional higher education? Pretty impressive, huh? Well, not really, because no one knows what they are, because no one tracks or reports them. The career college system works. Nationally accredited institutions place 70 percent or more in field, even in a U-shaped recession.

Stephen is also upset that in recent reporting on the career education sector, his former employer, The Chronicle of Higher Education, makes no mention of two issues discussed at the Department of Education’s just concluded Negotiated Rulemaking session: gainful employment and misrepresentation. Stephen terms the newspaper’s omission “mind-boggling.” Well, first, unless Stephen only reads his former employer’s publication once a year, he would know that The Chronicle never fails to report controversy about our sector, just as it reports controversy about traditional higher education—whether it be in disappointing American attitudes toward higher education, lending scandals, “amateur” sports programs, misuse of funds, etc.

We believe that the Chronicle took a fair and balanced look at the growth of career colleges. Would that Stephen would ever do the same.

One Year Later, Did the Stimulus Save the Workforce?

There appears to be strong validation it did some good:

Just look at the outside evaluations of the stimulus. Perhaps the best-known economic research firms are IHS Global Insight, Macroeconomic Advisers and Moody’s Economy.com. They all estimate that the bill has added 1.6 million to 1.8 million jobs so far and that its ultimate impact will be roughly 2.5 million jobs. The Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, considers these estimates to be conservative.

Still, the political battle to make those successes known is being waged as feverishly as ever:

One year after President Obama the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, The Washington Post's Alex MacGinnis reports that the White House will release its first annual report on the results of the $787 billion stimulus package. Despite the strong consensus among economists on the necessity of the stimulus package to combat the economic recession, the bill's first year has been rough, pockmarked by political controversy over the number of jobs saved, the proper methodology for measuring its effectiveness, and questions over where and to whom the money is going. Despite the immediate benefits of the stimulus package, economists still forecast a long road ahead for the American people.

On the birthday of the stimulus, the White House is making a major push to trumpet the stimulus after a long year of enduring political flak. Anticipating trouble during the 2010 elections, the White House and DNC are struggling to get back on message, airing an ad that portrays Republicans as "hypocrites" for griping about the stimulus while enjoying its success. Even Joe Biden authored a brief defense of the stimulus package in USA Today, praising the incremental successes of the bill and noting that "the best is yet to come."

Arguing at the margins about the stimulus' benefit seems reasonable, but the core assertion that overall the legislation was valuable and necessary seems beyond reproach. Regardlesss, to see how the stimulus affected your neck of the woods, look here.

Why Changing the Definition of "Gainful Employment" Is Bad for Higher Education

Arthur Keiser makes the case:

This proposed "gainful employment" rule, tying levels of federal student loans to projected starting salaries upon graduation, not only violates student rights, but is also highly discriminatory against adult learners attending career colleges and universities.

Ironically, it would only serve to restrict access to post-secondary education at a time when the country's economy demands the production of more productive graduates in high demand fields. With nearly 25 percent of all postsecondary students attending private career colleges and universities, the state of Florida would be significantly impacted.

The department's proposal to limit student loans for students planning to work in high-demand fields is especially frustrating considering the billions being spent to fund liberal arts degrees, for which there is very limited return on investment. It is unfair that under this proposal the other 75 percent of post-secondary students attending highly subsidized public institutions are not included in this regulation.

College is expensive, and unfortunately, most adult learners don't have the family income to pay out of their pocket. With severely restricted budgets, states across the country have cut back on higher education funding, and even government-owned institutions require students to take out loans to meet their expenses.

Student debt is a concern; however, these concerns do not merit an imposition of new rules and regulations that harm non-traditional students and the schools they attend. Tying starting estimated future salaries to tuition costs and the student's ability to borrow is nothing more than price fixing and government interference.

Understanding Pell Grant Allowances

Sandra Proulx makes some important points about why low-income students and some of the institutions they attend get unfairly tarred and feathered for doing nothing more than maximizing their benefit under the law:

So what does it take to meet pell grant qualifications?

Well, there is no “one size fits all” recipient.

Keep in mind, the Pell Grant is awarded to undergraduates with a high degree of unmet financial need; most Pell money goes to students with a total family income around or below $20,000. But, students whose families have a total income of up to $50,000 may be eligible too. In 2005-2006, students with family incomes of less than $20,000 accounted for 57% of Pell Grant recipients.

Your eligibility is determined by the FAFSA, and in order to meet Pell grant qualifications for the 2010-2011 school year, the highest your EFC should be around 4617, per Vicki Klinowski, of College Loan Consultant, who also provided the graph below. An EFC is the amount you or your family can be expected to contribute toward your college tuition.

2007-2008 Pell Grant Recipients by Income Level

Pell Grant qualifications can be affected by a student’s enrollment status as well as income earned through employment, too. Think about it – if you are enrolled half-time, your tuition is less and therefore you will require less aid. Undergraduates who work while they are enrolled are more likely to have incomes that decrease their eligibility for federal need-based aid (ahh, didn’t think of that, did you?). Some low-income students may even find themselves ineligible for Pell Grants because they are enrolled part time at very low cost colleges, or they work while they are enrolled, or do both.

In the 2003-2004 school year, more than 1.5 million college students who likely were eligible to receive Pell Grants didn’t bother applying for them because they found the FAFSA form too confusing. Don’t count yourself out! A number of changes have been made to the new FAFSA for the 2010-2011 school year which include simplifying the form.

Demand for Nursing Jobs Remains High

While it's debatable that there might be a temporary decrease in demand for jobs in the nursing field, all indicators suggest it's likely to be short-lived:

But the Naples News in Florida reports that demand for nurses will rebound as soon as the economy recovers. "The economic recession is kind of a blip but we have to stay focused on the long-term prize," noted Jennifer Nooney, associate director of research for the Florida Center for Nursing.

Although vacancies for registered nurses and licensed practical nurses dropped considerably in Florida from June 2007 to June 2009, experts expect the nursing shortage to return.

"I think it's really going to be short-lived," said Mike Polito, who works with workforce development and planning for the Lee Memorial Health System and was interviewed by the Naples News. "There needs to be something on the government side to help with the nursing shortage because it's long-term; a 10-year projection is a million nurse shortage by 2020 nationwide. That hasn't changed."

A recent survey conducted by AMN Healthcare seems to support his prediction. HealthLeaders Media reports that in its 2010 Survey of Registered Nurses, 44 percent of 1,399 nurses polled said they planned to make a career change over the next three years. In addition, 29 percent said they planned to work part time, retire, or switch to non-nursing jobs within the next three years. Nearly half of the respondents were nurses between ages 40-49, with 59 percent currently holding permanent positions.

Trend of Career College Expansion in the Face of Cuts to Traditional Higher Education Continues

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal:

Everest College, criticized for allegedly preying on poor students and praised for providing opportunities to that same group, will be able to open a downtown Milwaukee campus under a ruling Thursday from the city Board of Zoning Appeals.

The board voted 4-0 to grant a special use permit for Everest to operate at W. McKinley Ave. and N. 6th St., just north of the Park East area.

The Everest proposal, with the college leasing buildings renovated by developer Dan Druml, is "a good plan," said board member Henry Szymanski. Other board members made similar comments.

 From Macon.com in Georgia:

The University of Phoenix is planning to open a satellite campus off Bowman Road in north Bibb County.

The Arizona-based college, which is described on its Web site as the nation’s largest private university offering undergraduate and graduate degree programs at more than 200 locations and online, plans to lease 8,852-square-feet of space in a four-story office building at 6055 Lakeside Commons.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment on the new location.

The college plans to move into Suite 200 this spring, said Jim Huffstetler, senior land development manager for SSP Commercial LLC, the owner-developer of Lakeside Commons Office Park. Renovations of the space began in January, he said.

The institution is expected to enroll up to about 200 students with 10-15 administrative personnel, according to a zoning report. The school offers master’s and bachelor’s degrees on campus and online and associate degrees online for working, professional students.

Each class would have 15-20 students and two to four classes would be held each day, the report states.
“The majority of faculty members will not be housed in Macon, but will be visiting instructors or via telecommunication,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, community colleges are taking another hit in Louisiana:

The Louisiana Community and Technical College System on Wednesday approved its budget-cutting plans and layoffs of nearly 100 employees.

The cuts are implemented at a time when two-year colleges are experiencing rapid growth and have ballooned to nearly 70,000 students statewide, LCTCS President Joe May said.

The enrollment growth is about a 16 percent increase from last spring, May said, although official enrollment numbers are not available until today.

“How can we keep doing this if our general fund is getting cut and our enrollment is through the roof?” asked LCTCS Board of Supervisors Chairman Stevie Smith.

“What we need are seats available for people to get in them,” May said, noting students have been turned away at some campuses. “It’s great to be affordable, but it’s not so great if you don’t have a seat for a student to sit in.”

Community and technical colleges just implemented $8.2 million in budget cuts, or 4.5 percent of their state funds. These cuts come on top of $15.6 million sliced in June.

As The Washington Monthly's Daniel Luzer rightly points out, Nevada's public higher education institutions are in trouble as well.

This post is hardly exhaustive coverage of the changing dynamics of higher education, but a clear pattern in the press is emerging: in one of the worst recessions in American history, proprietary schools are coping with demand by expanding capacity; community and other state colleges respond by cutting services as budgets become inadequate. To what extent the proprietary model will be the future of higher education is debatable, but that it's influence is increasing by the day is incontestable.

Higher Education Enrollment in State Colleges Continues Financial Friction

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

A new analysis of state financing and enrollment trends in higher education highlights the challenges the nation's colleges will face even after the economy has fully recovered.

The analysis, released on Thursday by the State Higher Education Executive Officers association, concludes that states will have a harder time restoring spending on higher education after this downturn than they have in past recessions. Per-student state appropriations have generally recovered after past recessions, but the current economic situation presents greater hurdles, the group says in its seventh annual State Higher Education Finance report.

A major complicating factor this time around, says the report, is that enrollments continue to increase at a decent pace, while the effects of budget cuts put institutions further behind. Nationally, full-time enrollment grew by 3.4 percent from 2007-8 to 2008-9, while total state appropriations for higher education increased by less than 1 percent for that period.

"The big story is that the demand for higher education is outstripping the ability of states to finance it," said Paul E. Lingenfelter, president of the state officers' association.

It is at public institutions, but not higher education in totality. As CCA President and CEO Harris Miller has said, there's already a solution to this issue:

"When you ask where the capacity is," he says, "the short answer is primarily in our sector. We have the capital to invest the dollars to hire faculty, to make sure technology is up to date, and to make sure these are real skills people can contribute to the economy."

Again, this isn't an attempt by this sector to launch a baseline competition between segments of higher education. Rather, it's an underscoring of which segment of the higher education sector has the comparative advantage with regard to adding much-need capacity to cope with ballooning enrollment demand in a struggling economy. State-run colleges of all varities provide obvious and critical value, but are hamstrung by shrinking state budgets.

Success of For-Profit Colleges Noticed by Chronicle of Higher Education

A truly fair, balanced piece on the tremendous growth of proprietary colleges and the meaningful contribution they make in higher education is finally being recognized:

At a time when American public higher education is cutting budgets, laying off people, and turning away students, the rise of for-profit universities has been meteoric.

Enrollment in the country's nearly 3,000 career colleges has grown far faster than in the rest of higher education—by an average of 9 percent per year over the past 30 years, compared with only 1.5 percent per year for all institutions, according to an industry analyst. For-profit universities now educate about 7 percent of the nation's roughly 19 million students who enroll at degree-granting institutions each fall. And the proportion rises to 10 percent, or 2.6 million, if you count students who enroll year round. Just this academic year, the University of Phoenix eclipsed California State University as the second largest higher-education system in the country, with 455,600 students as of this month—behind only the State University of New York.

"It's been a tremendous growth story," says Jeffrey M. Silber, a stock analyst and managing director of BMO Capital Markets, which figures the for-profit sector brought in $26-billion in 2009. Most of that was earned by 13 large publicly traded companies that now dominate the market.

As those companies face shareholder pressure to expand, the for-profit sector is poised to capture students that public institutions can't accommodate and that small private colleges desperately need to maintain their enrollments. The sector is likely to be a key beneficiary of President Obama's $12-billion plan to produce five million more two-year-college graduates over the next decade. That's partly because for-profit colleges, which first opened more than 150 years ago offering certificates and diplomas, are increasingly encroaching into the territory of traditional higher education by awarding degrees. "All of the conditions are there for them to capitalize on their advantages and continue to grow," says David S. Baime, vice president for government relations at the American Student Association of Community Colleges.

The piece goes into detail about how this sector was able to grow and which comparitive advantages it holds in the higher education space - the ability to rapidly grow infrastructure, a focus on the student, etc. - position the already burgeoning sector to develop even more.

It's well worth the read and evidence that the schools, students and sector and essential components of America's higher education landscape.

Apple Inks Textbook Deal for iPad

iMedicalApps reports:

It was only a matter of time before partnerships between medical textbook publishers and the iPad development community emerged. One key partnership the Wall Street Journal just announced is between ScrollMotion (app developer) and McGraw-Hill’s Education division, with the purpose of developing e-books for the iPad.  And why does this matter? Because if you’re a medical professional, you most certainly have read or own a medical text from McGraw-Hill.

McGraw-Hill is the publisher of Harrison’s Internal Medicine, Schwartz’s Principles of Surgery, the Case-File series and many more medical texts.  They acquired Apple and Lange Inc in 2007, further expanding their vast medical library.  Many of us know of McGraw-Hill via Access Medicine, the online portal to their large collection of medical texts that is available in almost every academic institution in the country.

 Why would the iPad's technology be particularly advantageous for medical textbooks? Here's why:

Medical books are not often read cover to cover, instead key chapters are often referenced when needed.  Although the majority of medical professionals, myself included, will attest to reading Harrison’s frequently, it’s doubtful that any of us have read the massive text with the purpose of reading it front to back.  Also, could you imagine seeing key anatomic figures, pathologic pictures, and diagrams in E-ink text?  The dull black and gray colors would look awful.  On the iPad’s 9.7 inch 1024 x 768 pixel display, these full-color diagrams and figures would be far more aesthetically pleasing.  Viewing detailed anatomic figures would be especially useful, highlighted in one of our recent medical app reviews.

As promising as this news may be for education specialists at all levels, the challenge to convert from mostly print textbooks to e-textbooks remains stiff:

So far, digital education has largely been confined to desktops and laptops, but many college students have been slow to embrace e-textbooks on their computers. Portability could make the difference, however.

Maureen McMahon, president of Kaplan Publishing, said a recent Kaplan study showed that students remain big fans of printed books but that they would be more receptive to e-textbooks on portable digital devices.

Whether the iPad will be the digital device to transform the classroom remains to be seen. "Nobody knows what device will take off, or which 'killer app' will drive student adaptations. Today they aren't reading e-textbooks on their laptops. But ahead we see all kinds of new instruction materials," said Mr. Kranenburg.

Harris Miller Talks College Access in Economic Downturns at Vanderbilt University

Miller's comments begin at the 27 minute mark.

HT: The Itinerant Professor

The Case Against Linking Student Loans to Income

Daniel L. Bennett takes a crack at it:

First, using wage data ignores other forms of compensation such as health care insurance, retirement benefits, vacation time and other fringe benefits. These are all part of the total compensation paid by employers to employees. Not including these benefits in any type of debt-to-income calculation is ignoring a significant portion of an employee's compensation.

By restricting the income portion of the ratio to the 25th percentile of wage earners, the government is ruling out that many entry level workers' compensation may rise within the first 10 years of their career (the standard loan repayment period). Simply using the bottom 25% of earners in a field ignores the actual experience of individuals in that field and instead relies on a group of people that may change as individuals move up the pay scale. In other words, the bottom 25% of earners may always contain the entry level workers who may very well move up to the 50% of earners in a few years as they gain experience in a given field. To be effective, the income portion of the ratio would need to account for the net present value of expected earnings over a 10 year period by tracking the earning of individuals in a given vocation over the first 10 years of their career, as group statistics are misleading.

Next, setting loan limits on the basis of national wage statistics would undermine local market conditions which may vary a great deal. Compensation for some occupations may vary considerably by region, due to either differences in cost of living or labor supply and demand variations.

Such a mechanism would also need constant monitoring as market conditions change frequently. Compensation of various professions rarely stay in equilibrium for very long as labor supply and demand conditions, as well as other factors (inflation, technological, regulatory, etc), change continuously in a manner that affects compensation. A once a year snapshot of wage levels would not be just for a labor market that changes so often and varies so widely.

Lest we forget, there's also the inconvenient issue of these measures amounting to unfair price controls.

Online Nursing Programs Growing in Popularity

All online courses are growing in popularity, so why highlight nursing? Critical shortfalls in the number of nurses America's hospitals need to properly provide care is a persistent issue to underscore, but we bring this up today because traditional universities are using online degree programs to combat logisitical challenges:

"Most of the nursing schools in the country provide a high-quality product," said Daniel Briggs, co-founder and chief executive officer of Orbis, who was quoted in the Star. "They're just strapped for resources."

About 200 students have received nursing degrees through Orbis since the company began its service through a program with the University of Oklahoma in 2007. Anita Siccardi, professor and dean at Marian's nursing school, told the Star that the school hopes to increase nursing students using Orbis from about seven to 200 over the next year and a half.

Similarly, the University of Texas at Arlington recently announced the creation of an online Bachelor of Science in Nursing program which aims to address the problems of lack of available faculty and clinical learning space.

"Innovative approaches to enrolling and supporting students into schools of nursing are paramount as we face a significant nursing shortage," noted Dr. Rosemary Luquire, senior vice president and chief nursing officer and Baylor Health Care System in Dallas. "We are eager to test new strategies with our UT Arlington College of Nursing partner to assure we meet our communities' need for healthcare."

Demand for online nursing programs is likely to increase further in light of a recent study which recommended that all nurses receive a bachelor of science in order to practice. In fact, so great is the demand that Angie Strawn, associate dean of the University of Phoenix's nursing school, told Inside Higher Ed that the school does not feel threatened by the increase in nonprofit online nursing programs. 

Nor should she. There is plenty of infrastructure yet to be created to accommodate the demand for nurses. This is not a zero-sum game.

Houston Chronicle's Jeanine Kever Article on For-Profit Colleges So Close, Yet So Far

While we are pleased to see Jeanine Kever and the Houston Chronicle take notice of the success of the fastest growing sector of higher education (“For-profit colleges spur dreams and doubts”), we take issue with some of the negative characterizations of our sector in her piece.

Kever quotes Donald Heller, a traditional higher education stalwart, who suggests employers will not equate degrees from proprietary colleges with the University of Houston, Penn State or Rice. In fairness, employers will not equate degrees from the University of Houston with those from the University of Virginia, Berkeley, or MIT either. The issue isn’t whether one school is better than another or whether degrees from proprietary colleges are equivalent to any one four-year institution; it is whether these institutions reliably educate students with valuable degrees and training in a occupational fields that help them find jobs and prepare them for a 21st century workforce. Based on graduation and placement metrics, that are publicly available, they do.

In addition, students from our schools are not necessarily seeking bachelors or post-graduate degrees. Often they are seeking job-specific education and training on an accelerated certificate or two-year associates program so they can rapidly enter the workforce with in-demand skills.

Kever also suggests our students receive more than 20 percent of Pell grants, as if there is something alarming about the federal government giving low-income students the financial resources necessary to pursue a higher education degree. Our schools serve more low-income, non-traditional students than any other sector of higher education. The traditional higher education system is not admitting poor students. The student population at our institutions is naturally going to require more financial assistance to meet their educational goals. Over 62 percent of the students at for-profit schools (nearly 71 at two-year schools) are either below or at the poverty level or at 200 percent of the poverty level. By contrast, 32 percent of public four-year, 41 percent of public two-year and 29 percent of private non-profit students, respectively, are in the same economic situation. And career colleges strive to help students receive all of their grant aid to which they are entitled, while studies show that students at other types of institutions end up leaving a substantial amount of grant money on the table. For example, less than 60 percent of students who are eligible for Pell grants who attend community colleges get them.

As for online message boards filling up with complaints from students who did not receive a positive experience at a school from our sector, why not mention that similar websites dedicated to negative experiences exist for traditional four-year colleges and community colleges? Proprietary schools hardly have a purchase on online negativity. Trying to portray disgruntled Internet chatter as valuable data on institutional quality is neither appropriate nor meaningful. What is clear is that career college students graduate from two year programs at twice the rate of students attending community colleges.

With respect to the three-year default rate cited, the “data” is actually prospective, not actual. The Department of Education recently released the information to help institutions better manage their rates. The correct picture comes when we measure how similar demographics perform across education platforms, not how affluent schools compare to those serving the economically disadvantaged.

As both numerous academic studies and the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress, have both concluded, poverty and other at-risk factors affect default rates, no matter the type of institution. But that is hardly a reason to prevent students from disadvantaged backgrounds from pursuing valuable forms of higher education.

Has the iPad Already Begun the Takeover of Amazon's Kindle?

By temporarily - and shockingly - removing Macmillian books from Amazon (and thereby the Kindle) on Sunday, Amazon may have cut off its not to spit its face. It turns this has not only infuriated bloggers, authors and fans, it made strategic decisions that even removed their comparitive advantage in the marketplace:

Amazon buys and resells e-books in the same way it handles printed books, by paying publishers a wholesale price that is generally equivalent to half the list price of a print edition. Because Amazon has discounted the price of most new and popular e-books on its Kindle e-reader to $9.99, it loses money on most of those sales.

Amazon’s goal has been strategic: it aims to establish a low price for e-books that will have the ancillary benefit of helping it sell more Kindle devices.

Amazon’s decision is also a victory for Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, who first pitched the idea of selling e-books under the agency model to book publishers earlier this year. Now Apple, whose iPad tablet is due in March, can compete on fairly equal footing with Amazon.

How this will affect e-textbook market for either Amazon or Apple is an open question, but this can only be a boon for the burgeoning iPad as it aims to become the go-to device for e-publishers of every variety.

Taking a Look at the Future of Higher Education

EduCause tries to unpack the notion of "the future of higher education.

Morgan State's "Institutional Competitiveness" Protected Against University of Maryland University College Online Course

If there was ever any doubt about the strength and increasingly influential role online education will play in all three sectors of higher education, get a load of this:

The Baltimore Sun reports that the Maryland Higher Education Commission has voted not to revisit its decision denying a request by the University of Maryland University College to offer an online graduate program for community college administrators to in-state students, because it would compete with a similar program at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

The commission ruled in October that UMUC could not offer the degree program because it would be "unreasonably duplicative of, and demonstrably harmful to," a similar program already offered at Morgan State, a historically black institution.

Morgan State is protected by state regulatory language that calls for "appropriate steps" to preserve the "institutional competitiveness" of programs at historically black colleges. 

According to the Post, this is one of the first times in Maryland history where an online course was deemed to competitive for a similar class in a brick and mortar institution. The takeover hits a stumbling block, but assuredly continues.