Jay Fitzgerald discusses the degree mill scandal swirling around Bill Weld. He’s probably right that the big story here is the dampening effect on Weld’s NY gubernatorial run. But I find intriguing the larger ramifications about educational credentials. Jay writes,
Spare me the argument that this proves the pitfalls of for-profit education. Student-loans have become big business for non-profit institutions as well. The real problem here is that murky area where the private sector meets the public sector. Sort of like Medicaid, road construction, Pentagon contracts, etc.
Maybe my big-government liberalism is getting in the way, but the Weld episode strikes me as precisely evidence of the pitfalls of for-profit education. Yes, non-profit colleges can be degree mills of a sort. And even (especially?) the highest quality universities are pervaded by a money-making ethos that stretches from fundraising to labor relations to student aid. But the ultimate, pressing problem, at least as I see it, is not that student loans are big business, it’s that many - primarily for-profit - schools are popping up to take advantage of those students excluded by higher education by misleading them on the value of their unaccredited or underaccredited degrees. The fix strikes me as a simple one: settle on a reasonable but more stringent basis of academic accreditation and limit federal aid to accredited programs.
To be fair to Jay’s argument (if I’m reading him correctly), for-profit education needn’t ipso facto be a bad thing. There’s no reason for-profit institutions couldn’t voluntarily submit to strict accreditation standards, much as a bank may submit to a self-regulatory association. In practice, though, non-profit colleges cover such a wide range of this country’s educational needs and are so entrenched in the area that the only profit opportunity is on the lowest end of the educational spectrum, where companies have every incentive to offer little educational value (and labor market credential) for their students for the most money. The federal government should stop pretending that we’re doing anyone any favors by financing this racket.
No comments have been added to this post yet.