"For-profit colleges a terrible deal"

[cbelt3]

The article discusses "Buying Students". It's called recruiting, and providing unique services.. iPads, strippers, etc...

[Avenger]

mattkime wrote:
[quote=Avenger]Can you be more specific? My place of work is a nonprofit and there are a zillion places they can put their money away.

none of those places are investor or shareholder pockets.
There you go with your vendetta. What is the difference? Students and parents aren't getting it back. In a true non-profit model they would. The money is stashed away and called endowment, emergency fund or whatever.

[mattkime]

I think you've mistaken your vendetta for mine.

....but I knew that when i engaged in conversation. And still I opened my mouth.

Avenger wrote:
[quote=mattkime]
[quote=Avenger]Can you be more specific? My place of work is a nonprofit and there are a zillion places they can put their money away.

none of those places are investor or shareholder pockets.
There you go with your vendetta. What is the difference? Students and parents aren't getting it back. In a true non-profit model they would. The money is stashed away and called endowment, emergency fund or whatever.

[$tevie]

Well, since everyone insists on quoting Dakota I can see he is tragically confused as usual.

A non-profit is an organization which is non-profit-distributing, that is, not returning profits to their owners or directors. Any profit is channeled back into the institution. Yeah, endowments etc. Endowments create income for the College so it is not just being "stashed away" it is helping to sustain the organization. The Board of Directors and the Administration do not own shares in the institution and do not "profit" (aside from salaries for the Administration).

Profit is not the same thing as income.

[Ted King]

$tevie wrote:
Sadly, I think for-profit colleges are going to affect the non-profit colleges because for-profits can "buy" students right out from under a non-profit. It's all about the numbers.

There's some information in the article on a graph (gasp) that I think sheds an interesting light on this side discussion started from a non sequitur:




It differentiates between private colleges and non-profit colleges. In the text of the PDF this graph came from it explains that the term "private colleges" refers to non-profit private colleges. This is also from the PDF:

For-profit schools enroll far more high- dollar borrowers. Fifty-seven percent of Bachelor’s students who graduate from a for-profit college owe $30,000 or more. In contrast, 25 percent of those who earned degrees in the private, non-profit sector and 12 percent from the public sector borrowed at this level.

This is all pretty strong evidence that paying profits is costing students more than they would have to pay to go to a non-profit school and thus these things are evidence that the conclusion in the subject line of the OP is correct. There are also claims in the PDF that for-profit colleges also have lower graduation rates which, if true, makes them an even worse deal.

[$tevie]

I work for a non-profit institution and am used to for-profits being vilified so it's interesting to have some data to back up the emotional reactions. :-) We've had a for-profit school call students who've been accepted and offer them $5,000 off their retail price, so to speak, to come to that school. Like being at a yard sale or something.

[Avenger]

$tevie wrote:
Well, since everyone insists on quoting Dakota I can see he is tragically confused as usual.

A non-profit is an organization which is non-profit-distributing, that is, not returning profits to their owners or directors.

So if a company returns profits to the shareholders, who could be in the millions of ordinary people, and not to the CEO then they must be non-profit too.

[$tevie]

They don't return profits to anybody. Are you proud of being an idiot?

[Avenger]

You have no idea what you are talking about, and you are work at a college?

[Mac-A-Matic]

$tevie wrote:
I work for a non-profit institution and am used to for-profits being vilified so it's interesting to have some data to back up the emotional reactions. :-) We've had a for-profit school call students who've been accepted and offer them $5,000 off their retail price, so to speak, to come to that school. Like being at a yard sale or something.

Is that really much different than a school offering a "scholarship" discount to a student?


BTW, the above is a question, not a challenge.