APSCU Responds to djournal.com Article

APSCU's Brian Moran, Interim CEO & President, commenting on the djournal.com article Nation's For-profit Colleges Creating Real Horror Story on October 26, 2011:

Charlie Mitchell makes an inaccurate claim that for-profit colleges are “tricking people into signing papers that will treat them to a decade of debt.” This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

It is true that college costs are climbing, pushing some students to take out more loans, which is an issue that private sector colleges and universities take seriously. But this issue is not unique to our schools. On the contrary, a new College Board study found that public and community colleges costs for the current academic year increased more than 8 percent, a higher rate than at private colleges and universities. And private sector schools receive no direct financial support from state governments.

Mitchell also recycles the statistic that students at private sector schools account for half the loans in default. However, this argument is misleading. For the most recent year, 2009—a year beset by a woeful economy--defaults by PSCU students accounted for approximately .005 of all students in higher education. Meanwhile, our schools serve a non-traditional population that does not have as many resources, and therefore, is more likely to default. In reality, rates of loan default of lower-income students at PSCUs are nearly the same as rates of lower-income students at community colleges and four-year colleges.

As even Mitchell contends, private sector schools “do some people some good.” The truth is, our schools provide almost four million, often non-traditional, students like single moms, veterans and working adults, with invaluable advancement opportunities. The Department of Education recently found that graduates of four-year private sector colleges and universities were employed in higher percentages than graduates of either public or private non-profit universities. Mitchell should re-evaluate the record. The only thing our educators are treating our students to is the opportunity for advancement.