Non-Profits College inc. Organization - Essay Example

College Inc. The PBS special “College Inc.” opens by showing us images in what look to be ordinary campuses that can be found anywhere across America. The commentary over the video tells us something about what makes these students different though. They go to for profit colleges that dont deliver on their promises of an excellent education and a better future. Rather, their graduates are faced with mounting debts and useless degrees that are not recognized by employers. Their propaganda commercials have the showroom feel of a shiny brand new car.

They entice you to want to get a college education. Which is not a bad mindset to be subliminally feeding the viewers at all. The commercials for these schools do not sell an education, they sell idealism. They sell a lifestyle, They sell a promise to give you an education that will set you on the road to financial stability. In other words, the ads feed on the vulnerability of the American population that is looking for a way to have a better life or a better job. The people who tend to be enticed by these ads are those who have been rejected by regular educational institutions either for lack of qualifications or a full roster of students.

If I were in charge of a for profit school that is worth around $60 million like Chancellor University, I would allocate 50 percent of the profits to raising the standard of education by hiring the best possible professors that money can buy in a contractual basis. That is because tenure is something that is severely over rated. Teachers should not be paid more on the basis of their tenure at a college, rather they should be paid for the quality of their ability to teach. If they dont pass muster, then get rid of them.

But that can only be done if the professor does not hold tenure at the college. Federal grants help the students at the for profit colleges get a jump start on their education by allowing the students access to taxpayer dollars that was meant to help them give back to the society later on in their professional lives. Since the FSA takes care of 90% of the fees, the student practically has a free ride through college. The for profit colleges benefit from the system because they are sure to be paid for their tuition fees and other charges regardless of the actual capacity of the student to pay for their education.

Uncle Sam actually takes care of that for them. The problem is that some for profit colleges such as DeVry University offer programs that are not accredited by the correct institutions and therefore become worthless pieces of paper once the student graduates. Even though they worked towards a degree and have the training and confidence to do the job, the employers wont hire them. They are unemployable graduates in the end and that is what makes it hard for them to repay their student loans. This is a problem that the for profit colleges cause because of their greed.

They just want the money but dont really care about the quality of their education or getting the job done properly. That is because for profit colleges have only one bottom line, parting the student from their money. For profit colleges use any means necessary to get a student to enroll. That is a commendable act in most cases. However, when they employ tactics short of terrorism to get that person to enroll, when they prey on the students fears and use that against them in order to get them to sign up, the act of getting them into college becomes a despicable act to me.

Their reasons for doing so, such as “what matters is helping them get into college” become void. The case of Anne Cobb is one that is not exclusive to for profit colleges though. Even students in community and non-profit colleges face the same mounting federal student loan interest problem. Lets face it, education is a business. But the for profits have taken the game to a whole new level by buying into the non-profit colleges and converting them to for profit colleges. What scares me is that the non-profits have been selling out in order to keep their institutions alive and my nieces and nephews will be faced with the reality that in the future, college education will just be about dollars and cents and not about the education and job skills training that it used to be all about.