Stephen Colbert University?

Last night the Colbert Report took on the for-profit college industry, and Colbert had a conversation with Andrew Hacker, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens College, CUNY.  Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus recently published the book Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids and What We Can Do About It.

This definitely caught my attention because I’ve been working on a short article about for-profit colleges for this blog.  Just recently PBS Frontline aired College, Inc. a documentary about the for-profit college industry. (It’s available to watch for free on the PBS website and also streamed on Netflix.)

As usual Colbert is on point.  He asks Hacker in the interview, what makes traditional colleges so special?  “Why is their crushing debt any different from the crushing debt of an online college?”  He has a point.  Overall student loan debt in the U.S. is now at $750 billion, roughly equal to the entire amount of credit card debt in the U.S.   The difference though, as PBS reported, is that for-profit colleges account for 10% of the nation’s students, but account for 44% of the student loan defaults.  What we are seeing in the for-profit college industry are risky short-sighted lending practices not unlike those that brought on the housing market crisis.

What’s most troubling about the for-profits is not that they are commercializing education.  There’s never been some pristine time when higher education was free of market values.  But what they are doing is amplifying the type of corporatization and extortionist profiteering already at work in the traditional higher education system.  (How many of you whipped out the MasterCard for those over-priced textbooks you were required to buy this week?)

What’s more is that for-profits are making some eye-popping revenue in the process.  For instance, the Apollo Group, Inc., which runs The University of Phoenix and other institutions, is an S&P 500 corporation valued at around $4 billion.

Next week I’ll be taking a closer look at College, Inc. and the recent screwball comedy Accepted, which is a silly but somewhat perceptive take on the for-profit college phenomenon.

Share on Facebook

Print Friendly