The Sector

A quick post today.

The Nation has a somewhat disturbing report on how for-profit colleges have resurged in these past two years.

Though the industry has in recent years suffered a regulatory drubbing from federal and state officials over systemic fraud and financial abuse, the scrutiny has evaporated under the Trump administration, and corporate higher education is looking to make a comeback. In an extensive analysis of New York’s higher-education system, The Century Foundation (TCF) warns that without tighter oversight, the state’s upcoming budget may become the primary financier of an industry better known for exploiting rather than educating its students.

Great!

I suspect we are not going to escape the grasp of such institutions, especially as funding to public college is slashed left and right. And, yes, I certainly have a personal interest in this, having once worked for a for-profit school that I gradually learn was exploiting its students as surely as typical such schools, but, my own biases aside, if you care about education more than money, and particularly so in the state of New York, this should concern you as much as it does me.

What do you know about ACICS? If you haven’t worked with or for a for-profit school, probably nothing.

Please read this article about how ACICS is trying to regain its power and influence.

The gist of it, sadly, is that the current administration is friendly to for-profit schools and is likely to allow them to operate without as much regulation as is needed.

To wit:

For years, the accrediting body gave its seal of approval to institutions plagued by complaints, and oversaw for-profit schools that had some of the lowest graduation rates in the country and some of the highest rates of student loan defaults.

It accredited Corinthian Colleges even as it was declaring bankruptcy in 2015, and the agency did not pull the accreditation of ITT Technical Institute until after the federal advisory panel recommended the termination of the council’s recognition.

ACICS is not to be trusted. People like me, and probably you, will have little reason to worry about the damage they have done, are doing, and will continue to do, as their student population is relatively underprivileged and often convinced to take on loans they are unlikely ever to repay, even if they did happen to get a well-paid position (which they often do not). I speak from experience here, as, two jobs ago, I worked for an institution that sought to be accredited by ACICS, and each step they took towards gaining approval by the council led to more overcrowding, less support for instructors, and a generally less productive educational environment, though more money for school administrators.

Unfortunately, there is probably little that can be done to stop the current administration from warmly embracing ACICS. I write about this only to inform of the impending (and ongoing) danger of unscrupulous for-profit institutions.

The Times article I quoted above ends thusly:

“Yes, our sector has had bad schools like every sector of higher education,” Mr. Gunderson said. “But it is time that everyone across the political spectrum stop, step back and look for ways to work together to establish public policies that treat all sectors of higher education on a fair and equal basis. The ideological wars must end.”

I agree, if only in the sense that helping the people who suffer should be the only agenda that matters, and granting unbounded power to ACICS should not be an ideological battle at all. Yet such is the world of education in our country these days.

Two articles to contrast a bit today.

The first one is from Time, and its thesis is that people who attend state schools can end up just as successful as people who go to “elites.”

So why don’t we tell our kids the truth about success? We could start with the fact that only a third of adults hold degrees from four-year colleges. Or that you’ll do equally well in terms of income, job satisfaction and life satisfaction whether you go to an elite private college or a less-selective state university. Or that there are there are many occupations through which Americans make a living, many of which do not require a college degree.

Not wrong!

He continues:

The problem with the stories we’re telling our kids is that they foster fear and competition. This false paradigm affects high-achieving kids, for whom a rigid view of the path to success creates unnecessary anxiety, and low-achieving kids, many of whom conclude at a young age that they will never be successful, and adopt a “why try at all?” attitude. Many of these young people engage in one of the most debilitating forms of self-talk, telling themselves either, “I have to, but I can’t,” or “I have to, but I hate it.”

Also true! Not to get too personal, but I know that anxiety intimately.

The article concludes that telling students the truth – that working hard is valuable but that prestige isn’t everything – would motivate them far more successfully than fear of failure. And the author has decades of experience as a child psychologist – although, and it’s important to note, he does not provide his own data.

Yet when you look at another set of statistics, a different picture emerges.

Take a lot at this article from the NY Times, on the particular struggles of black boys attaining – and holding onto – income and wealth.

Black boys — even rich black boys — can seemingly never assume that.

The study, based on anonymous earnings and demographic data for virtually all Americans now in their late 30s, debunks a number of other widely held hypotheses about income inequality. Gaps persisted even when black and white boys grew up in families with the same income, similar family structures, similar education levels and even similar levels of accumulated wealth.

And so.

On the one hand, I feel like I’m possibly supporting harmful behavior, since pushing said black boys to achieve based on fear of failure surely has the same emotional and cognitive results as it does for other children. But on the other hand, it is a statistical reality that students of color – and particularly black boys – cannot fully take it easy.

In a way, black boys have to be both exceptional and exceptionally lucky to achieve the same success as their peers. And I’m not sure we have yet figured out how to motivate people to achieve exceptional results through the sort of honesty the first author espoused.

The question becomes, how do we help disadvantaged students excel, to the point that they have equal footing with their peers, since being realistic with them would entail telling the truth that they have to work harder to achieve the same results? And is there a way to do this without the fear that leads to anxiety?

I have no answers to this. But I think, while valuable, the first article leaves out a few keys factors for students outside of the norm.

An interesting recent piece from NPR can be found at this link.

A choice quote:

When people (not just teachers and politicians, but reporters, too) talk about average salaries, they often use numbers that haven’t been adjusted for regional differences in cost of living. Clearly, the costs of life — from rents and mortgages to movies, food and day care — vary widely, depending on where we live. Without adjusting for that, comparing teachers’ salaries in New York to, say, California is classic apples to oranges.

There is indeed a lot of noise in the way teacher salaries are discussed.

Frankly, there is no career where “average national salaries” is a useful figure for a place this large and varied.

Another wrinkle:

Before we get into the numbers, a few quick caveats: There is obviously wide variation in the costs of living within states, too, that these numbers can’t clearly capture. In some cases, deep pockets of veteran teachers may also conceal low pay for young teachers. If you’re curious to know what states pay their starting teachers, EdBuild has looked at that, too.

A salary in Rockland county goes farther than it does in the city.

So what does it say about New York? Well…

• New York ranks first in average salary at $77,957 but, after the adjustment, plummets to 17th.

Interesting. And that’s the entire state…

Click through above, and pore through the data, too. When we talk numbers, we have to use the right ones.