Another day, another sign that Big Labor has nuked the fridge.
The SEIU is holding a webinar today, to assail for-profit learning institutions.
For-Profit Colleges Are Often a Bad Choice. Join Us Online and Learn Why.
And they’re often a good choice, a way to get into your career a couple of years ahead of your peers, and way to avoid blowing even more money on a state-run four-year institution that pays its associate deans and tenured professors of studies in the latest left-wing fad whopping salaries and employs the likes of Ward Churchill. The SEIU won’t be talking about any of that that.
College is usually a good thing. But when you attend a for-profit school—such as The Art Institutes, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College, South University, or others—it can do more harm than good. For-profit schools often mean higher tuition, more debt, and a lower chance of graduating than traditional schools.
For-profit schools are also largely held accountable by the forces of the market economy. If they can’t place graduates in jobs, people find out, and they have a harder time attracting students. The same cannot be said of state institutions, which are largely insulated from market dynamics that would force them to perform better.
That’s why we’re sponsoring a free public webinar on the dangers of for-profit colleges. Education experts, former for-profit recruiters, teachers and students will tell you everything you need to know to protect yourself—and your future.
Our panel includes:
- Kevin Kinser, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, SUNY-Albany
- Barmak Nassirian, Associate Executive Director, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers
- José Cruz, Vice President for Higher Education Policy and Practice, The Education Trust
- Osamudia R. James, Associate Professor of Law, University of Miami School of Law
- Kathleen Bittel, former EDMC recruiter and career services employee
- Jeremy Dehn, former EDMC instructor
- Suzanne Lawrence, former EDMC recruiter
- Mike DiGiacomo, former student at EDMC’s New England Institute of Art
And so forth. Can you say “Waste of time”?
Actually it’s part of a concerted campaign against for-profit schools. Here’s what’s going on. The Obama administration has launched a war against privately owned, for-profit colleges, through the Gainful Employment rule. To what end, I’m not sure at this point. Even some liberal Democrats have questioned the administration’s attack on for–profit schools, and called for Obama’s Department of Education to be investigated for shady deals related to that rule. And now Big Labor is launching this flank attack on the for-profits.
Don’t ever forget that Barack Obama pledged to take the SEIU’s agenda with him into the White House. That’s one of the very few promises he has managed to keep.
Uh, is this a trick question?
Its not that they are a ‘bad’ choice, its that ‘choice’ itself is bad. “Choice” implies market competition allowing the customer to compare and contrast one system of delivery to another.
We simply can’t allow this.
Priceless: “a free public webinar on the dangers of for-profit colleges.”
Dangers? Really?
And isn’t it interesting? Non-profit educators and the SEIU clamor for more regulation of their chief competitors. And of course the Regulator in Chief is leading the charge.
Well, conventional wisdom would say that a union would be opposed to the private schools because in order to organize a private school, they’d actually have to organize the employees and get and keep a majority. In the public school, they can just “organize” the politicians who will then give them the members. Very few public employees have ever voted in an election to determine whether they wanted representation at all; to the extent they’ve had elections at all, they are merely to determine which union gets the members.
On the other hand, SEIU has made great strides in organizing healthcare providers by “partnering” with managment to work together to get the providers’ hooves further into the public trough. So, their angle here, since the private schools also get a lot of government funding through training programs VA benefits etc. may well be that they tell the school management that they can work with them to get more funding or they can work against them to make sure that they get the full attention of the whole federal alphabet soup. As Stern said, the power of persuasion or the persuasion of power.
Art, this is the best description of public sector union strategies I’ve ever seen:
“In the public school, they can just ‘organize’ the politicians who will then give them the members.”
If you have the resources and contacts, Bryan…dig deeper.
There is a MUCH bigger story here.
I know this by pure, dumb, happenstance.
I was asked to help a friend of a friend. Because I deal with so many businesses, I was introduced to someone who is an executive at one of the larger one of these for-profit schools. They are always looking for employment opportunities for their students. Relentlessly. Endlessly. Every waking moment of every day.
The horror stories I was told about the abuse, intimidation, threats they receive from the small c communists would curl your toes.
Think about it. What possible connection is there to the Workers Party and training mostly inner city kids, from poorer backgrounds, in a free market jobs creation program?
Think of EVERY reason why the small c communists would not want that to flourish, thrive, or even survive. Then, think of EVERY way to abuse, threaten and intimidate. Frankly, you probably can’t think with enough evil.
Okay, but the charts they’re showing have footnotes from actual reports and documents — it’s not like they’re making this stuff up.
Just do a Google search of for-profit schools and students who have been screwed over by them. There are also actual news articles here…tons of them: http://www.forprofitu.org/edmcpress/
There’s a pretty big audience out there who would agree with whatever the SEIU is saying and have no reason to partner with SEIU. Including the DOJ. That’s fine if you don’t think this should be an event sponsored by SEIU but let’s not be stupid here — this is a serious issue and it’s not some conspiracy by the Obama administration.
“For-profit schools often mean higher tuition, more debt, and a lower chance of graduating than traditional schools.”
Uhhh, what’s the definition of For-profit? To hire quality teachers and offer a good curriculum would tend to make them cost more. More debt? Yeah, but wouldn’t actually knowing what you are doing by being better trained mean a better paying job and more of a chance to be able to pay off this debt? A lower chance of graduating? Does that mean it’s harder to get by without learning something?
– wearing their purple shirts.
One, these for-profit colleges get over 90% of their revenue from tax dollars. Over $30 billion a year of our money. That alone should invite some curiosity.
Two, they are targeting military veterans, which should concern anyone with a sense of decency.
Three, yes, “dangers” sounds hyperbolic, but ask one of the students who’s been misled into $90K in debt, and he’ll probably use much stronger language.
Four, the assumption that for-profits are market-based and therefore must pay their teachers better and produce a better education is simply false. I was a teacher there. Both counts false. Period.
Five, please, please stop lumping me in with that idiot Ward Churchill just because he and I both taught college classes. It’s only a little less wrong-headed and annoying than lumping me in with Timothy McVeigh because both of us own a gun.
Assuming that the free-market solution must automatically be effective is just as foolish as a liberal assuming that a government solution must be. Are you a partisan hack or do you actually bother to find out facts before you judge?
CUW is right. This is a legit issue.