Don't punish career colleges

In an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News, Harris N. Miller, the president of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, discusses the importance of for-profit colleges, also called career colleges, in our economy.

The Department of Education is attempting to stifle their role in fostering the post-recession workforce with its burdensome "gainful employment" rule--one that does not apply to not-for-profit schools.

Here is what Miller says:

For-profit private colleges provide career-oriented education in areas such as health care and information technology to more than 3 million students. They provide opportunities for those underserved elsewhere, especially minorities and working adults. In 2009, 342,000 California students attended private colleges, 50,000 in the Bay Area alone.

Private colleges have been the leaders in more student-oriented approaches to learning, such as using technology to overcome barriers. Some traditional schools slowly are following suit. Yet Washington proposes singling out private colleges for extra restrictions. If the proposed rules applied to traditional schools, many of them also would fail.

We would like to see tighter controls on costs covered by federal student loans and grants. But student debt is an issue for all types of institutions, not just private-sector colleges and universities. While this proposed rule may be well-intentioned, the unintended consequences -- closing thousands of programs and cutting off access for more than 2 million students by the end of this decade -- will fall hardest on the very people it aims to protect.

This trend not only moves our county's graduation numbers backward, but it also has very real consequences for individual students. The median salary for an associate degree earner is $31,906, compared with $26,140 for a high school graduate. Although private colleges enroll only 12 percent of all postsecondary students, our institutions award more than 18 percent of all associate degrees. Over the past few years, our percentage of graduates has risen faster than our overall growth.

Related posts:

Issa's oversight committee to look at GAO report on career colleges
Tom Harkin attacks career colleges
GAO revises its negative report about for-profit schools
The Department of Education's war on career colleges
Idiotic edu-crats attacking for-profit colleges

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