For-profit Colleges Research Articles

Precarity and the Predatory Inclusion of Black Women by For-Profit Colleges

Numerous sectors and institutions engage in ‘predatory inclusion’, purporting to satisfy the unmet needs of historically marginalized groups under exploitative terms. However, extant scholarship has yet to robustly examine why they target certain groups. Drawing on Black feminist Marxism, I theorize how predatory inclusion depends on precarity, and I redefine ‘precarity’ as a structural position of vulnerability to violence based on excess responsibilities and the denial of means to meet them – or, ‘alternativelessness’. I convey the usefulness of my definition of precarity and my theorization of the relationship between precarity and predatory inclusion through empirical sections that demonstrate how for-profit colleges (‘for-profits’) prey upon the alternativelessness of Black women, the race-gender demographic group with the highest rates of debt-financed enrollment in for-profits. By examining the training materials for admissions ‘counselors’ at for-profits, I illuminate how for-profits succeed at enrollment growth by manipulating the pain, urgency, and relationality of this precarity. I also reveal how descriptive statistics of Black women’s enrollment and financial need in for-profits correspond to the sector’s predation of precarity. I contend that precarity must be contested for the sake of ending the predatory inclusion of Black women and all others positioned alongside them as ideal prey.

Stigmas and limited opportunities of on-line and for-profit university doctorate graduates in Technology, Healthcare, and Business

Introduction:Walden, Capella, and the University of Phoenix universities generate many African-American doc-toral graduates, according to Diverse Problems in Higher Education. Problem:While these universities graduate many minority students with doctoral degrees, they contribute sig-nificantly to student loan debt. These universities are for-profit, on-line, or owned by for-profits. Because of that classification, these universities and their doctoral degrees have stigmas in higher education that may hinder African-American and other minority faculty chances at elite, state flagship, and prestigious research universities. Objective:The research aims to formulate strategies to help African-Americans be more knowledgeable about non-traditional doctoral program selection and the current stigmas of graduating with a doctorate from a to-tally on-line or for-profit university. The purpose is not to diminish the accomplishment of anyone with the intellect, courage, and talent to get a regionally accredited doctoral degree. This research intends to educate and empower African-American and other students of color in their doctoral decision-making and discuss the stigmas against doctorates from for-profit universities and totally on-line universities in the U.S. Methodology: The approach used was a content analysis of the literature and qualitative interviews using a phenomenological research approach. The purpose is not to diminish or demonize graduates and degrees from regionally accredited on-line doctorate programs offered by for-profit universities, because they have provided opportunities and access to doctoral education. The goal is to share the realities of the current stigmas of those degrees from those universities in academic communities at the most highly ranked universities. The ultimate aim would be to educate them on the importance of school choice, even if the only viable option for doctoral completion is an on-line or hybrid doctoral program. Results:Academic careers often depend on having a doctorate and the university that awards that doctorate. So, African-Americans and other students of color should investigate and choose brick-and-mortar universi-ties with on-line and hybrid doctoral programs, which are often viewed more favorably. This study offers an accurate world understanding of the challenges and stigmas of African-American doctoral graduates driven by where they pursue their doctorate degrees. Conclusion:This project seeks to change the behavior of doctoral program selection and modification practices that would make graduates more successful and favorable for full-time faculty jobs after graduation. Originality:The gap in the literature explored is the limited academic discussion about how attending and com-pleting a doctorate from one of these universities can be detrimental to African-Americans, especially if they are interested in full-time tenure-track faculty careers at non-profit research universities.Limitations:More current research is needed on the stigmas and challenges of getting a doctorate from a for-profit or totally online university. More scholarly dialogues from the literature could have enriched the study.

Labor Market Inequality, Debt, and the Consequences of Sub-Baccalaureate Higher Education

ABSTRACT U.S. young adults in the 2000s and 2010s entered a national labor market that was highly stratified by education. While the socioeconomic consequences of a four-year bachelor’s degree are well documented during this period, less is known about the consequences of seeking a sub-baccalaureate credential. I analyze the employment, earnings, and student debt outcomes associated with several sub-baccalaureate experiences differentiated by enrollment, credential level, and for-profit attendance using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1997 Cohort. Using fixed-effects regression models, I find that certificates and associate degrees are associated with employment advantages relative to a high school diploma. However, young adults with some two-year college and no credential or a certificate have no higher earnings than those with a high school diploma. Sub-baccalaureate credentials can also be costly, as those who attend a for-profit college have more student debt than those who do not. Results shed light on labor market inequality among a large but understudied segment of higher education and underscore the importance of considering debt alongside labor market outcomes in analyses of the socioeconomic consequences of higher education.

Promising or Predatory? Online Education in Non-Profit and For-Profit Universities

Abstract Online education is a rapidly growing segment of the postsecondary system, and recent growth is concentrated at non-profit universities. Research shows that Black and low-income students are disproportionately represented in online programs; however, research on the outcomes of exclusively online education, especially at four-year non-profit universities, has been limited. Two narratives have emerged about the consequences of the access that online education provides: one describing it as promising and the other describing it as predatory. We harness both institution-level data and individual-level data to intervene in this debate. We show that online education is related to worse educational outcomes in non-profit and for-profit sectors, including lower retention and graduation rates. A sensitivity analysis suggests that selection into online education is unlikely to explain these results. Attending online is also related to some less desirable student loan repayment outcomes across sectors. Our results suggest that online education is a form of “predatory inclusion,” in that access is coupled with increased risks for students relative to comparable peers attending in-person. In light of our findings, we propose that the provision of online education by for-profit entities—even in the non-profit sector—may play a central role in producing poor student outcomes.

How Did Colleges Disburse Emergency Aid During COVID-19? An Implementation Analysis of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund.

To address the unprecedented challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress authorized the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF I) in March 2020 with over $6 billion allocated for emergency financial aid. In this paper, we utilize the administrative burden framework to analyze HEERF I implementation for a stratified random sample of colleges, focusing on the implications for equity. We find that disbursement policies varied along two dimensions: (1) whether they imposed burdens on students by requiring applications and proof of hardship and (2) whether they targeted needy students and varied the amount of aid according to need. When we examine sectoral differences, we find that private for-profit colleges were more likely to place higher burden on students, whereas public and minority-serving institutions were more likely to reduce burden.

Exploring Between-Sector Transfers: Why For-Profit University Students Switch to Public Institutions

This study explores the choices and experiences of undergraduates who transfer out of for-profit 4-year universities and matriculate into a public university. Interviews with students who moved from one of seven 4-year for-profit universities to a single public university during Fall 2021 indicated a combination of academic and financial factors that precipitated their decisions to transfer. Specific academic-related issues included lack of alignment between students’ interests and the school's available degrees, quality concerns, and institutional policies and practices that restricted students’ agency in making decisions about their academic program of study. Affordability was also a major consideration for many study participants. Attending the for-profit was a low-cost option initially but changes in aid packages and/or tuition prices motivated them to seek less expensive options elsewhere.

Unfulfilled Promises: Tensions in Mission Statements of For-Profit Colleges and Universities

Unfulfilled Promises: Tensions in Mission Statements of For-Profit Colleges and Universities

State Law and Protecting Students from Predatory For-Profit Colleges and Universities

State Law and Protecting Students from Predatory For-Profit Colleges and Universities

Geographical Constraints and College Decisions: How Does For-Profit College Play in Student’s Choice?

Geographical Constraints and College Decisions: How Does For-Profit College Play in Student’s Choice?

Sherwin Rosen Prize

Previous articleNext article FreeSherwin Rosen PrizePDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreDavid Deming is the 2022 recipient of the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to labor economics. Deming is the Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Political Economy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Deming earned his PhD in public policy from Harvard University in 2010 and served as an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University the following year. He has taught at Harvard University since then. He has served as a coeditor of the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics and the Journal of Human Resources.David is a creative and outstanding scholar who has made first-order contributions to a wide range of labor and applied economics topics. His research illuminates important policy-relevant questions that push the research frontier, including articles on higher education, skill development, economic inequality, technological change, the long-run impacts of early and K–12 schooling, and the connections between education and criminal activity.Deming’s most profound impact may come from his work on the labor market returns to skills. In “The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2017), David illustrates how work is placing greater emphasis on “soft skills” like teamwork, social perceptiveness, problem-solving, communication, and adaptability. The labor market increasingly rewards social skills, while the share of less social, purely cognitive-intensive jobs is shrinking. He develops a team production model where workers “trade tasks” to exploit their comparative advantage. Those with more social skills are advantaged in trade, which enhances specialization and efficiency. He tests the model’s implications for sorting and the relative returns to skill across occupations. He documents the increased wage gain from sorting into social skill–intensive occupations in the 2000s for the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) cohort compared with the 1980s and 1990s for the 1979 cohort.With Ben Weidmann, he followed up this work with experimental evidence (Econometrica, 2021) that gets inside the black box of the social skills/team performance relation and identifies qualities of “team players.” His research characterizing the returns to experience as a race between on-the-job learning and skill obsolescence with Kadeem Noray (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2020) similarly brings remarkable data analysis to new theoretical insights. It upends conventional wisdom about the lifetime returns to certain credentials and fields of study. His 2018 Journal of Labor Economics paper with Lisa Kahn presents evidence from a massive database of job postings that cognitive and social skills are complementary.David has made exceptional contributions to the economics of education. His 2009 American Economic Journal: Applied Economics paper uses a within-family siblings design to provide compelling longer-run evidence on the returns to early childhood educational investment. His 2014 American Economic Review paper (with Justine Hastings, Thomas Kane, and Douglas Staiger) documents the long-run implications of school choice and the importance of school quality. Deming has been a leader on policy-related issues in higher education, including the role and regulation of private for-profit postsecondary institutions, the rise of online programs and institutions, the design of student financial aid policies, and public college funding. His 2016 American Economic Review paper (with Noam Yuchtman, Amira Abulafi, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence Katz) presents evidence regarding the value of degrees and certificates from online programs, for-profit colleges, and nonselective public institutions. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Labor Economics Volume 40, Number 3July 2022 Published for the Society of Labor Economists, Economics Research Center/ NORC Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/721003 Views: 590Total views on this site © 2022 The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Did Gainful Employment Regulations Result in College and Program Closures?

AbstractFor decades, the federal government has expected vocationally focused programs in higher education, especially among for-profit colleges, to lead to gainful employment in a profession. In the mid-2010s, the U.S. Department of Education developed gainful employment (GE) regulations that sought to tie a program's federal financial aid eligibility to graduates’ debt-to-earnings ratios. We use a regression discontinuity design to examine whether for-profit programs’ performance on GE was associated with the likelihood of closing the program or college. Although the regulations were repealed before any program lost federal funding, we find that passing GE regulations was associated with a lower likelihood of program and college closures.

Care to Persist: A Campaign to Ensure Nursing Student Success During A Time of Crisis.

Student persistence is crucial for preparing nurses to meet the demands of an ever-changing health care environment. The RN to BSN Online Degree Completion Option at a large for-profit university implemented the Care to Persist campaign in 2018 to support student persistence. This campaign evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been a critical component in ensuring students' success. First-term session-to-session persistence rates improved from 81.2 percent in May 2019 to 85.2 percent in May 2021. The campaign has been a beneficial strategy to care for students and ensure academic progression both before and during the pandemic.

RN to BSN Jump Start to Success

As part of the call to increase the number of registered nurses prepared with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree coupled with barriers faced in nursing education due to COVID-19, one for-profit university launched an registered nurses to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Jump Start to Success initiative. The purpose of this descriptive review of an educational innovation was to determine if outcomes between Jump Start students and matriculated students would be equal in the program. The Jump Start initiative enrolled non-matriculating students who were awaiting graduation and successful National Council of State Boards of Nursing completion by offering two courses tuition-free. During the analysis period, data revealed the first course mean final numeric grade for matriculated students was 94.5 compared to 95.0 for Jump Start students (x2 = 0.2064, p = 0.649588; t-test = -5.11, p = 1.84). Final numeric grades for both groups had a normal bell curve distribution. Additionally, 55% of Jump Start students matriculated into the registered nurses to Bachelor of Science in Nursing Online Degree Completion Option. The Jump Start initiative has provided a foundation on which future initiatives can be built that promote seamless academic progression. Educational institutions should continue to collaborate to develop creative and innovative enrollment strategies.

Student debt and default: The role of for-profit colleges

For-profit providers have become an important fixture of US higher education markets. Students who attend for-profit institutions take on more educational debt and are more likely to default on their student loans than those attending similarly-selective public schools. Because for-profits tend to serve students from more disadvantaged backgrounds, it is important to isolate the causal effect of for-profit enrollment on student debt and repayment outcomes as well as the educational and labor market mechanisms that drive any such effects. We approach this problem using a novel instrument combined with comprehensive institution-level data on student debt, default, educational attainment, and labor market outcomes. Our instrument leverages the interaction between changes in the demand for college due to labor demand shocks and the baseline supply of for-profit schools. We compare how enrollment and subsequent outcomes change across areas that experience similar labor demand shocks but that have different latent supply of for-profit institutions. The first-stage estimates show that students are much more likely to enroll in a for-profit institution for a given labor demand change when there is a higher supply of such schools in the base period. Among four-year students, for-profit enrollment leads to more loans, higher loan amounts, an increased likelihood of borrowing, and an increased risk of default. Two-year for-profit students also take out more loans, originate more student debt, and have higher default rates. We present evidence that these debt and default outcomes are driven by higher for-profit tuition and a negative effect of for-profit enrollment on labor market outcomes. Our results point to high costs and low returns to for-profit enrollment that generate worse student debt and repayment outcomes. These findings have important implications for public investments in higher education as well as for how students make postsecondary choices.

The Troubled Present and Uncertain Future of Academic Labor

AbstractThis review article surveys recent studies of the state of and challenges to academic labor in the ongoing regime of academic capitalism, corporate managerialism, and neoliberalism in colleges and universities in the United States, Europe, and select other countries around the world. Some works analyze changing funding models, accountability mechanisms, and forms of administrative power, while others explore the discourses pervading higher education and impacting the self-understanding of academics. Higher education administrators, boards of trustees, and politicians have sought to create flexible and inexpensive academic labor. New studies explore the three main strategies pursued: the failed effort to promote Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), the proliferation of for-profit colleges and universities (FPCUs), and the continuing expansion of contingent labor, full and part time. Other works analyze the innovative unionization efforts on the part of contingent faculty and graduate teaching assistants.

Old Neoliberalism in the US University

Old Neoliberalism in the US University

Has the University Always Been “Neoliberal”?

Has the University Always Been “Neoliberal”?

Asymmetry by Design? Identity Obfuscation, Reputational Pressure, and Consumer Predation in U.S. For-Profit Higher Education

This article develops and tests an identity-based account of malfeasance in consumer markets. We hypothesize that multi-brand organizational structures help predatory firms short-circuit reputational discipline by rendering their underlying identities opaque to consumer audiences. The analysis utilizes comprehensive administrative data on all U.S. for-profit colleges, an industry characterized by widespread fraud and poor (although variable) educational outcomes. Consistent with the hypothesis that brand multiplicity facilitates malfeasance by reducing ex ante reputational risks, colleges that are part of multi-brand companies invest less in instruction, have worse student outcomes, and are more likely to face legal and regulatory sanctions (relative to single-brand firms). Maintaining multiple outward-facing brand identities also mitigates reputational penalties in the wake of law enforcement actions, as measured by news coverage of legal actions, and by subsequent enrollment growth. The results suggest identity multiplicity plays a key role in allowing firms to furnish substandard products, even amid frequent scandals and media scrutiny. Predatory practices are facilitated not only by the inherent informational asymmetries in a given product, but also by firms’ efforts to make themselves less legible to audiences. The analysis contributes to research on higher education, organizational theory, and the sociology of markets.

The ties that corporatize: A social network analysis of the career paths of university presidents

ABSTRACT Herein, we demonstrate how social network analysis can model potential pathways for corporatization in US higher education by tracing the career histories of presidents (n = 215) from a heterogeneous sample of US colleges and universities. We examine the connections among sectors of higher education in this sample and external organizations like corporations and government agencies in order to describe larger network patterns created by presidents’ career paths. We find two different network typologies between not-for-profit and for-profit universities; corporations and government agencies are present in both. Seven times more corporations than baccalaureate colleges are found in the network. Just half (54%) of university presidents began their careers in a tenure track position suggesting diverse career pathways are common.

Modeling Education Deserts for Veterans and Military Families in the Southern United States

Despite billions of dollars invested in educational benefits for veterans and active-duty military families under the U.S. Post-9/11 GI Bill, many prospective students are not forging pathways through public institutions of higher education, and funding is disproportionately spent on for-profit colleges. To reveal patterns of lack of access and opportunity, we propose a novel, robust analysis tailored to the situation of veterans and military families in the southern United States. This methodology delineates education deserts using fuzzy algorithms and multivariate spatial analysis to move beyond simple “hotspot” identification of distance from university locations. Results and comparisons of four models confirm different patterns for veterans versus nonveterans and show dynamic regional changes from 2005 through 2017 that reflect shifting demographics, economics, and educational offerings. These insights could inform a roadmap for outreach that accounts for shifting education deserts and potentially workforce opportunities through geographic analysis. This approach represents a potential first step for academic actors, especially in the public sector, who play a role in advancing science, technology, engineering, and math; geography; and geographic information systems to enable veteran and military families to better achieve equitable rates of educational attainment.