Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Idiotic edu-crats attacking for-profit colleges

During the Colonial era, most of our colleges, probably all of them, were run by Protestant religious orders. Latin was a mandatory subject. Later, philanthropists founded non-sectarian schools, the Catholic Church started their colleges--and of course so did state governments. Then came community colleges. Education evolves, ipso facto.

And then came along for-profit schools, which not surprisingly, tend utilize a more practical approach to education--teaching skills that will get them jobs quickly. Which is a good thing--the national unemployment rate is almost 10 percent and has been this high for months.

DeVry, the University of Phoenix, and Corinthians Colleges are the better-known for-profit colleges.

But President Obama, a former University of Chicago professor, has many edu-crats in his administration. And the edu-crats, who are usually creatures of elite academia, dislike for-profit schools.

Stephen Spruiell offered a backgrounder on that battle in May for National Review Online.

While there have been abuses by for-profit schools, such as enrolling unprepared students and saddling them with a lot of debt, the colleges are offering safeguards. For instance, the Miami Herald reports that the University of Phoenix now offers a mandatory orientation which lasts three weeks so it can weed out the unready before they take out student loans.

That's not good enough for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who wants to impose a bizarre tuition cost--estimated salary formula in order for enrollees at for-profit schools to be eligible for Pell Grants and student loans. Funny, someone majoring in Latin at an Ivy League college won't face the same cost-benefit restrictions.

How idiotic. Oh, that word derives from the Latin word, idiota an "ordinary person, layman,"

Durbin is the idiot who is working against the ordinary person, the regular guys and gals out there.

Oh, did you know that not-for-profit and for-profit schools can learn from each other? Imagine that.

You're never too old to learn.

1 comment:

curierat said...

nice ideas, a bit to energic but they are ok