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October 15, 2009 12:50 PM
It Could Have Been Worse
Inside Higher Ed reports that yesterday’s hearing could have been a lot worse for for-profit colleges:
Rumor had it, in the days leading up to Wednesday’s hearing before a House of Representatives committee, that officials from the U.S. Government Accountability Office were preparing to screen a video for lawmakers that showed officials at an unidentified for-profit college giving would-be students the answers to a test designed to gauge whether they have the “ability to benefit” from a higher education. The alleged misbehavior by the college official had already been made public — it was by far the most explosive accusation made in a GAO report issued last month — but the vision of an ACORN-like video that might live for eternity on Youtube and Metacafe suggested that Wednesday’s hearing could be explosive and make life extremely uncomfortable for for-profit colleges.
The incident at the unnamed for-profit college did get a multimedia airing before the House Education and Labor Committee — in the form of audio, not video — and the apparently egregious violations of federal law had some members of the audience burying their heads in their hands and squirming in discomfort.
I would be curious to find out the decision-making process that led to the audio, but not the video, being aired. The audio was pretty bad as it was, but there’s a pretty big gap between audio and video when it comes to garnering wider attention.
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BGinCHI on October 15, 2009 5:42 PM:
The first sentence is missing a word. It ought to read "...for for-profit colleges:"
My questions though is....what's the point? Would the video have told us more than the summary? What is it we don't know? And really, is it just this one anecdote that would convince us that for-profit colleges are mostly bullshit operations? If you know anything about them, and about what they're trying to do, then you wouldn't need this example of fakery. You'd have all you need.