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Despite much valid criticism of the for-profit education industry, American proprietary schools might have something valuable to offer higher education. According to an editorial by business columnist Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post:
The… potential of for-profit schools is their focus on teaching and learning. Unlike traditional universities, they have been aggressive in finding ways to use technology to cut costs and achieve economies of scale. They make extensive use of videotaped lectures and online interactive tests. Classes often “meet” online, as well as in classrooms, and there are teaching assistants available 24/7 to help students with homework. All of this works particularly well for introductory courses, as well as for those that are part of professional training and certification.
There is no reason that these cost-effective new ways of teaching and learning couldn’t be used effectively at traditional universities other than that they would disrupt just about everything — routines, hierarchies, to say nothing of the incomes and job security of the tenured faculty.
It’s no doubt a little more complicated than this but Pearlstein here offers one of the more succinct and effective defenses of the for-profit education industry. It’s not that for-profit education as a model really offers anything good, but it offers a model for potentially effective education. Education can be cheap and efficient and also be effective.
The next step to making this happen would seem to be improving the way that Americans understand whether or not colleges work. At this point it’s pretty hard to know objectively whether a college—any college, whether traditional or for-profit—actually does a good job educating its students or helping them get jobs.
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bob on August 16, 2010 6:58 PM:
The problem is that all those savings go into profits and not making education more affordable.
dms on August 16, 2010 7:49 PM:
Well, I was going to make a comment, then reread your last sentence. At first I thought you were conflating "educating" with "getting a job". I now see you've included an "or" in that sentence. They are not the same things.
So, we first might want to consider what the role of college is. Education, or knowledge is a value in and of itself. Getting a job is another matter altogether.
If the reason for going to college is merely to get a job, then I think students, parents, and colleges could spend a lot less time and money. How hard can it be to teach someone to bullshit, pad their resume, and blame their inadequacy on some other department within a company, and get rewarded for it.
RepubAnon on August 16, 2010 8:13 PM:
Where's the data showing that these innovative new techniques actually work? Yeah, they're cheaper - but multiple choice tests aren't a good way of testing critical thought. They do test memorization nicely, but we've got computers to store facts for easy access.
The for-profit education industry is subject to much the same manipulations as the investment advice industry. The ads are quite slick - but the end product may not measure up.
LosGatosCA on August 16, 2010 9:37 PM:
This is great. Innovation should be welcomed from any quarter. Just like community colleges proved you don't need to have tenured full professors teaching every section at the entry level, electronic teaching and testing is proving to be cost and skill based certification testing efficient.
It's better to pay better teachers more money to teach those courses and\or those students that benefit the most from personal instruction and save money on other situations that can be delivered more cheaply.
Let public schools leverage the for profit techniques where it works and not apply it where it won't.
Texas Aggie on August 17, 2010 1:14 AM:
My observations have been somewhat addressed, but let me make them anyhow.
The first think I noticed in the article was that there was no evidence that the technologically enhanced methods were working. That they are being used almost exclusively by for profit schools and for profit schools have a dismal record of preparing people for jobs, their stated purpose, suggests that these techniques don't work. This evidence is not definitive, however, so more studies have to be made of just these techniques under different circumstances to decide whether or not they are effective and what they are effective in doing.