You can pick up the original story from the Inside Higher Ed website if you want to, but what they’re talking about is a research project
done by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education
Research (CALDER), where the researchers sent out a little under 9,000
simulated applications for entry-level jobs, half of which depicted community
college graduates and certificate holders, and half of which represented people
with equivalent credentials obtained from for-profit schools. In all cases, the
fake applicants were presented as young people, with 2010 high school
graduation dates and with a consistent level of work experience, training,
skills and abilities. And what the researchers discovered was that the response
to the two different applicant pools was virtually identical – roughly the same
percentage of people in each group received positive replies from employers and
requests for interviews…
Now, there’s definitely a temptation to see this study as
deflating the claims of the for-profit industry, and in fairness it’s hard to
blame anyone for wanting to do that. Even leaving the outright charlatans out
of it, we have all seen a lot of advertising over the past decade claiming that
the for-profit schools can get you a better education on your own schedule,
without having to deal with any of the aggravation associated with traditional
institutions of higher education (like qualifying for admission, one imagines).
But Academia in general has been rising to the bait in recent years, lumping
for-profit schools that actually do provide value with programs that are really
just multi-day advertising programs for someone’s personal writings (I’m
looking at you again, Trump University) and claiming that the whole industry is
fraudulent. And this study would appear to debunk those claims right along with
the ones made by the for-profit schools…
Granted that paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for a
class that you can get at a local community college for under fifty is not
necessarily a good value for the money, saying that such a program has no value
would seem both unkind and inaccurate. If a given student can get the same
results from either school, then the for-profits may be over-priced, but that
doesn’t make them useless. And in cases where a local community college does
not offer on-line classes, or sections that meet on weekends and evenings, the
private sector could be the only practical option available for some students.
We should probably also note that there is more to getting an education (at any
level) than just how much it is going to help you find work. If students who
are already employed are able to gain knowledge and skills – or even just
self-confidence – that will assist them in their careers through any form of
education, then it becomes increasingly difficult to conclude that their chosen
program is not giving them good value…
As an educator, and a taxpayer, I can honestly say that I
really don’t care how people go about learning more things, so long as they do.
As a business analyst and a management consultant, I can very definitely say
that if people are willing to pay extra for convenience (e.g. for classes held
where and when they can easily attend) there’s nothing wrong with someone
providing such a service. Of rather greater concern to me was the fact that
both groups combined received responses from barely 20% of all of the companies
to which they “applied”, and interview requests from just over 10%. If
something like 90% of job applicants with two-year degrees or equivalent
certificates can’t get as far as a job interview, we may have a bigger problem
than where to spend our education money…
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