Federal College Regulations Struck Down By Federal Judge
The Huff Post reports that “a federal judge has struck down central parts of hotly debated new federal regulations meant to rein in for-profit colleges that often leave students saddled with debts they cannot repay.”
This decision makes no sense in a time of tight budgets and Romney telling students they should get the best education they can afford.
How can a court to force anyone, including the federal government, to subsidize programs that do not work. The tax payers deserve to know how their money is being spent!
Perhaps the real issue is Obama’s decision to focus on profit. Anyone who does not think that Harvard is a profit making entity is drinking too much crimson Kool-Aid.
WGU reports paying its president and founder about $800,000, Unlike his less well paid peers at public universities, Dr, Mendenhall also sits on the boards of companies that profit from WGU’s sales of education software to WGU students.
The focus ought to be on whether these job oriented, usually “online” schools deliver the education they promise. Certainly being “non profit” is not an excuse for anyone who claims to be helping students get jobs. In the public sector, we call this “accountability.”
Nor is the real issue here “online” education. There is obviously a huge need for better us of online education, Even Harvard and MIT have recently jined forces to put theire great resources on line and offer course credit!
The only real issue is whether the product being sold in a jobs program has nay value to helping students find jobs. For example, despite extensive effort on my part, I have been unable to find any information that Western Governor’s University, supposedly a private, non profit dedicated to job creating education, has any record at success with its programs. WGU has refused to reveal statistics showing how many grads get jobs. In the meantime, this non profit pays its administrators six figure salaries that approach the magic number of seven figures.
Why shouldn’t WGU .. or for that matter the country’s increasingly popular, private creationist and bible based schools, our own more conventional community colleges or the UW and Harvard be subject to the same critical criteria as Phoenix University?