The heroic teachers who died while courageously trying to protect their kids at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, and the others who survived but stayed to protect the kids, were all part of a school system where the employees are members of the American Federation of Teachers.
Just let that sink in for a moment. Then compare their actions to Mark Belling's description of teachers:
"Most Wisconsin public school teachers are absolute lunatics. People at least now are beginning to say this. I've been talking about this for years. Most of them are not good people. Most are not fair minded. Most of them do not care about the children. Most of them are sickening union thug money jerks who couldn't care less about the public good."
Those teachers, who are routinely accused by our politicians and radio talk show hosts of being drones and selfish, incompetent money grubbers worried more about their pensions than about teaching our children (though most, even after 10 years, earn less than $55,000 a year for doing a very difficult job that involves at least 12-14 hours a day of work and prep time counting meetings with parents), stood their ground when confronted with a psychotic assailant armed with semi-automatic pistols and an automatic rifle, and protected their kids.
The principal too, a veteran teacher herself, stood her ground, reportedly suicidally charging at the assailant along with the school’s psychologist in a doomed effort to tackle him and stop the carnage.
How many of us would have had to the courage to stand in front of a closet door to keep an armed madman from finding the kids hidden behind it, as one slain teacher died doing? How many of us would charge at an armed shooter, to almost certain death, in an effort top stop him from further killing? How many would bravely hide in a bathroom with a class of kids when we could have run away and saved ourselves?
And this: How many of the politicians in Washington and in state capitals and how many conservative think-tank “researchers” or radio talk show hosts who attack teachers as leeches and drones would have shown such heroism under fire?
My guess is damned few -- if any.
Yet it appears from the news reports that not one teacher in that unionized school fled the scene and abandoned the children to their fate. They all stuck with their kids. So did the custodian -- no doubt a unionized worker earning modest wages -- who ran through the building warning everyone of the attacker’s presence.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the Newtown school board, like school boards all over this country, was considering cutting the school’s elementary music program and library program.
The school librarian and the school music teacher, whose jobs were on the line at the school board, stayed with the kids they were teaching when the attack began.
Yet in an attitude all too typical of many Americans’ thinking, one man, in a discussion section of the local paper, discussing the local School Board’s $1-million budget cutting plans last spring, wrote to a teacher last spring:
"You, as a public sector employee, don’t generate ANY revenue. Every penny of the budget of your public sector enterprise is TAKEN from producers. It’s other people’s money versus money your organization EARNED. Your salary is not market based. Your salary, nor your benefits, nor your job, is in jeopardy during contracting economic times. If I want a raise I have to prove I have contributed more to the bottom line, and then it doesn’t matter unless the entire firm has grown the bottom line sufficiently to give me that raise. You are insulated from that reality. Your private (sic) sector salary only goes up. How is that fair? Especially in light of the fact that you don’t even generate the revenue that pays for your constantly rising salary?"
Some of those “non-revenue-generating” unionized teachers, and the school’s non-revenue-generating principal, just died defending their students.
I wonder if their critics would have done the same?
This post is a modified version of a blog posting by David Lindorff
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Monday, December 10, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
A two year college takes on the for-profits
A TV commercial the college unveiled last week compares the $3,300 annual cost of tuition, fees, books and supplies at Ozarks to $32,000 at Bryan College, a small Christian for-profit, $18,000 at ITT Tech and $14,000 at Everest College and Vatterott College.
“When looking at the costs, there is no comparison,” a voiceover says during the commercial. “The numbers speak for themselves.”
A pugnacious ad from a community college is rare. The sector generally avoids duking it out directly with for-profits, which have much bigger marketing budgets. But that may change as community colleges, like the rest of higher education, seek to demonstrate return on investment to an increasingly skeptical public.
“When you have a good thing going and you hide a light under a bushel, you’re not very smart,” said Hal L. Higdon, the chancellor at Ozarks, which is located in Springfield, Mo.
Enrollment is flat at many community colleges, after a broad surge in demand in the first couple years of the economic downturn. A cynic might suspect that Ozarks is chasing an elusive student market and trying to beat back strong competition from for-profits. Not so, however, as the college has struggled to meet heavy student demand, having seen its enrollment grow to 15,000 students from 9,000 several years ago. Ozarks has been forced to turn away students in allied health and technical programs.
Higdon also said for-profits haven’t been a major threat. “I don’t think they really hurt our enrollment.”
So why create the campaign?
The answer, Higdon said, is to help prospective students and their families be better-informed about college costs. Good consumer information can be hard to find in higher education, and hysteria about sticker prices at expensive private colleges tends to dominate the discourse. Higdon said students often do not know how affordable Ozarks is, or how its costs compare to those at for-profits. The college backs up its assertions in the ad with data from the U.S. Department of Education.
“We want our students to be smart consumers,” he said.
And for-profits do cause some problems for Ozarks. Higdon said students who have previously attended for-profits sometimes come to the college with heavy debt loads. Ozarks inherits those students’ debt on what it reports to the federal government, which also hurts the college on loan default rates.
Ozarks is not alone in overtly taking on competitors. Southwestern Illinois College has tried a similar tack with a marketing campaign the two-year institution began a few years ago. Dubbed "SWIC-onomics," the campaign’s print ads explain tuition at the college and how it is only a "fraction" of tuition levels at public and private universities.
More community colleges will likely test the water with bolder marketing, said Alan Moran, vice president of marketing and communications at Cuyahoga Community College. That will be a shift from a historic focus on advertising that pushes academic programs rather than “trying to show the value for attending the school,” he said.
And while sagging student demand may not be an issue at Ozarks, other community colleges are suffering from it. They might need to get more aggressive to beat back for-profits, most of which are struggling with even steeper enrollment declines.
“Community colleges will not sit by idly when students in their backyards are being poached,” said Moran.
Another reason Moran said community colleges will try different messages with prospective students is that the sector is increasingly getting into online education, which means trying to attract students from beyond their local areas. Cuyahoga is even marketing outside of Ohio.
However, he said the most effective advertisements are still those that try to show that an education at a community college leads to a good job or to further educational opportunities. Cuyahoga tests all of its ads, and the best responses are to stories about the success of actual students.
Ozarks is spending $20,000 on advertising during the first two weeks of the campaign. That’s peanuts compared to what for-profits can spend on marketing, particularly national chains.
For-profits often claim that state support gives community colleges an advantage in competing on price, which is certainly true to some extent. But Higdon said Missouri doesn’t get much credit for low tuition levels at Ozarks, which is roughly $4,000 for in-state students who live outside the local district. That’s because the state kicks in just $962 annually per full-time student, with total state support covering 13 percent of the college’s overall budget.
“We’re among the worst-funded higher education in the country,” he said.
Government funding probably isn’t coming back for community colleges. And as the sector becomes more privatized, it will need to be savvy about marketing, said Higdon, who previously worked in business.
“Everyone’s going to have to be there.”
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/27/community-college-takes-profits-marketing-campaign#ixzz2DQlvS413
Inside Higher Ed
Monday, November 26, 2012
MATC investing millions to create a skilled labor force
The school also recently received a more than $1 million federal grant to provide advanced manufacturing support for the community, Burke said.
Southeastern Wisconsin employers, particularly manufacturers, say they’re struggling to find candidates for open positions with the right skill sets, despite high unemployment.
As part of its response to that need, MATC has added eight degrees, 15 technical diplomas and 24 certificates since 2011, Burke said. Those include a new welding certificate, a diploma in Web/mobile designer technology, and degrees in automotive technology, health care services management and computer simulation and gaming.
“These are all industry-certified skill sets,” Burke said. “I think this speaks to the evolution of our work force. I think it’s our responsibility to provide those, not necessarily degrees, but find industry skill sets that we can certify that students can layer on top of one another in essence to find that market niche in our work force arena here — or create a job (that didn’t exist before).”
Burke spoke during an education roundtable discussion Nov. 13 hosted by The Business Journal at The Pfister Hotel. Panelists — including leaders from technical colleges, private universities and two-year and four-year public colleges — shared the variety of ways their institutions are trying to bridge the gap for employers.
The rest of the article is linked here.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
Another for profit, Career Education Corp., announces closings and layoffs
Only days after Career
Education Corporation’s (CEC) shares plummeted and its CEO resigned, one of the
nation’s largest for profit college chains announced
that it would close 23 of 90 campuses and lay off 900 employees. CEC’s Sanford Brown campus in Milwaukee is among
those that will be shuttered.
The CEC has been hit hard by what a company official called "new market realities." It has seen its total and new student numbers dip by roughly 22 percent compared to last year and reported an operating loss of $110 million for the year through October.
Career Education Corp. is also facing increased scrutiny from its accreditors. The Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges, established to provide accreditation to for-profit colleges that cannot achieve regional accreditation, has asked the company to "show cause" for why accreditation should not be withdrawn from 10 of its institutions. The inquiry stems from the company's acknowledgment that it lacked sufficient documentation for some job placement data.
The CEC is no stranger to controversy.
Just a year ago its Chief Executive Officer resigned after corporate profits significantly fell and allegations were made involving inflated student placement statistics. Several lawsuits were filed by investors who claimed they were defrauded while CEO Gary McCullough was paid nearly $9.8 million in 2011.
The CEC had previously been investigated by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for various issues of non-compliance in 2005. In January 2008, CEC reported that the SEC has closed its investigation and would take no action against the company. A Department of Justice investigation began in 1994 and was terminated in April 2007, with the DOJ declining prosecution. Another investigation on a different matter was begun by the Civil Division of the DOJ in June 2006 and is currently ongoing.
In June 2005, the U.S. Department of Education prohibited CEC from expanding until it had resolved issues with financial statements and program reviews connected with Collins College and Brooks College two CEC schools. In January 2007, the U.S. Department of Education lifted its restrictions on the company opening new schools or acquiring existing ones.
CEC's division, American InterContinental University, was placed on probation in December 2005 with its accrediting agency, SACS. The probation status was reviewed after one year, in December 2006, and extended an additional 12 months. On December 11, 2007, CEC announced that SACS has removed AIU's probation and that the university's accreditation remains in good standing.
Brooks College, a CEC owned school, was the subject of an unfavorable examination of for-profit trade schools in the CBS news magazine 60 Minutes which focused on alleged misrepresentations by admission representatives to prospective students. A CBS producer with a hidden camera visited several CEC schools in the New York area, including the Katharine Gibbs School. In June 2007, Career Education Corporation announced that it will close both campuses of Brooks College.
In January 2007, the New York State Education Department reported deficiencies at the Katharine Gibbs School's New York campus. The problems related to faculty qualifications and remedial course offerings. Career Education has since closed Katharine Gibbs School's New York campus.
The California Culinary Academy, which was purchased by CEC in 1999, was the subject of an unfavorable article in the San Francisco Weekly focusing on misrepresentations and omissions made to prospective students to enroll them in the school. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a lawsuit was filed over the matter.
Before this week, the Career Education Corporation has 80,000 students and more than 90 campuses that located throughout the United States and in France, the United Kingdom and Monaco. Those institutions include, among others, American InterContinental University. ("AIU"); Brooks Institute; Colorado Technical University ("CTU"); Harrington College of Design; INSEEC Group ("INSEEC") Schools; International University of Monaco ("IUM"); International Academy of Design & Technology ("IADT"); Le Cordon Bleu North America ("LCB"); and Sanford-Brown Institutes and Colleges.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Union workers save lives and power Hurricane Sandy recovery
The recovery from Hurricane Sandy is going to require time, money and effort. And, like so many of the heroic rescues that happened during the storm, much of the effort is going to come from union members, and especially from the unionized public workers that the Republican Party has worked so hard to hurt over the past couple of years.
Already we've seen fire fighters, police, EMTs, nurses and other health care workers saving lives.
They've gone into flooded streets to rescue people, fought fires, carried patients down flight after flight of stairs to evacuate them. New York City fire fighters belong to the Uniformed Firefighters Association. Many of the health care workers carrying patients out of NYU Langone Medical Center as it was evacuated belong to SEIU1199.
Now the hard work of getting back to normal has begun. Garbage collectors are out clearing debris from city streets. Bridges and tunnels are being inspected for safety. Railroad tracks and roads are being assessed and repaired. New York City buses will begin running again Tuesday afternoon, driven by unionized transit workers. Members of more than a dozen unions were involved in rescue or are involved in recovery.
These union members are people whose jobs Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and congressional Republicans would cut, whose pensions and benefits have been slashed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose right to bargain has been under attack across the country.
Make no mistake about it: The fact that these are union workers is important. Unions bargain for the tools their workers need to do the best job possible, from having enough workers on the job to having adequate equipment and training. The wage and benefits improvements union members get help keep workers on the job for longer, so that they develop the skills and experience to handle worst-case scenarios like the one we're seeing now. Having health care keeps them healthy enough to do physically taxing jobs like carrying patients down 17 flights of stairs.
If someone you love was rescued from a flooded area, chances are it was a union member who rescued them. When your power goes back on, chances are a union member will have done the work. Mitt Romney will probably once again encourage you to embrace the line that we like workers, but just hate their unions. But the workers are the unions, and the collective power of unions helped individual workers rescue people or restore power or mobility by making sure they had the tools to get the job done and the pay and benefits such important work deserves.
For more see the Daily Kos.
Already we've seen fire fighters, police, EMTs, nurses and other health care workers saving lives.
They've gone into flooded streets to rescue people, fought fires, carried patients down flight after flight of stairs to evacuate them. New York City fire fighters belong to the Uniformed Firefighters Association. Many of the health care workers carrying patients out of NYU Langone Medical Center as it was evacuated belong to SEIU1199.
Now the hard work of getting back to normal has begun. Garbage collectors are out clearing debris from city streets. Bridges and tunnels are being inspected for safety. Railroad tracks and roads are being assessed and repaired. New York City buses will begin running again Tuesday afternoon, driven by unionized transit workers. Members of more than a dozen unions were involved in rescue or are involved in recovery.
These union members are people whose jobs Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and congressional Republicans would cut, whose pensions and benefits have been slashed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose right to bargain has been under attack across the country.
Make no mistake about it: The fact that these are union workers is important. Unions bargain for the tools their workers need to do the best job possible, from having enough workers on the job to having adequate equipment and training. The wage and benefits improvements union members get help keep workers on the job for longer, so that they develop the skills and experience to handle worst-case scenarios like the one we're seeing now. Having health care keeps them healthy enough to do physically taxing jobs like carrying patients down 17 flights of stairs.
If someone you love was rescued from a flooded area, chances are it was a union member who rescued them. When your power goes back on, chances are a union member will have done the work. Mitt Romney will probably once again encourage you to embrace the line that we like workers, but just hate their unions. But the workers are the unions, and the collective power of unions helped individual workers rescue people or restore power or mobility by making sure they had the tools to get the job done and the pay and benefits such important work deserves.
For more see the Daily Kos.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
A Big Storm Requires Big Government
New York Times Editorial 10/29/12
Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.
Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.
Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.
Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.
It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.
The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.
Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.
Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
3 University of Phoenix campuses in Wisconsin will close
Yesterday the University of Phoenix announced that it was closing 115 locations across the country, a move that will affect 13,000 students. Three of these campuses are located in Wisconsin. The Madison, Brookfield and Grand Chute campuses have stopped enrolling students and eventually will close. At this point the Milwaukee campus will remain open.
.
The closures come as parent company Apollo Group Inc. said earlier this week that its fourth-quarter net income tumbled 60%, hurt by higher costs and declining enrollment at the University of Phoenix. .
The University of Phoenix currently has about 328,000 students, down from a peak of more than 400,000. Following the closures, it will be left with 112 locations in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Shares in the Phoenix-based company tumbled nearly 8% in after-hours trading.
.
The closures come as parent company Apollo Group Inc. said earlier this week that its fourth-quarter net income tumbled 60%, hurt by higher costs and declining enrollment at the University of Phoenix. .
The University of Phoenix currently has about 328,000 students, down from a peak of more than 400,000. Following the closures, it will be left with 112 locations in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Shares in the Phoenix-based company tumbled nearly 8% in after-hours trading.
University of Phoenix to close 115 locations
The University of Phoenix, the nation’s largest for-profit university, is closing 115 of its brick-and-mortar locations, including 25 main campuses and 90 smaller satellite learning centers. The closings will affect some 13,000 students, about 4 percent of its student body of 328,000.
It is also laying off about 800 employees out of a staff of 17,000, according to Mark Brenner, senior vice president for communications at the Apollo Group, which owns the university.
After the closings, which are to be completed next year, the University of Phoenix will be left with a nationwide network of 112 locations and a physical presence in 36 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Apollo stock closed Wednesday at $21.40, down $6.09, a 22 percent decline.
Enrollments at the University of Phoenix and in the for-profit sector over all have been declining in the last two years, partly because of growing competition from other online providers, including nonprofit and public universities, and a steady drumroll of negative publicity about the sector’s recruiting abuses, low graduation rates and high default rates.
In Milwaukee, Everest College, owned by Corinthian College Inc.announced it was closing less than two years after its controversial opening after regulators disclosed that the college had an abysmal 5% job placement rate and a drop out rate of more than 50%. Sanford Brown, another for-profit with a nefarious reputation, has also announced that it is closing its Milwaukee campus
Late last month, Kaplan Higher Education, a division of the Washington Post Company, announced that it was closing nine of its campuses and consolidating four others into nearby locations. The company did not give a reason, but in an August filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission it disclosed that an accrediting commission had warned that its campuses in Baltimore, Indianapolis and Dayton could lose their accreditation — and with it, eligibility for the federal student aid that makes up more than 80 percent of Kaplan’s revenues — for failure to meet student achievement requirements.
As the negative publicity about for-profits mounted — including many charges that the schools enrolled students who had almost no chance of succeeding, to get their federal student aid — both Kaplan and the University of Phoenix announced new programs, offering some form of free trial, to ensure that they enrolled only students who had a reasonable likelihood of success. Those programs cut substantially into their enrollment numbers.
“We’ve said publicly that about 20 percent of the students in our free three-week online orientation program either don’t complete the program or don’t enroll,” said Mr. Brenner.
To help boost enrollment, the University of Phoenix last week announced a tuition freeze for students who remain consistently enrolled.
Students affected by the University of Phoenix closings will have the option of transferring to the university’s online classes — about three-quarters of its students are online — or moving to a nearby site. Students are now being notified of the changes, and a hot line has been set up at (866) 992-3302 for those with questions.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
What caused the deficit?
It has become an article of faith among Republicans that President Obama's polices caused the deficit to soar. As a result, they claim we need to cut federal programs that assist low and middle income families because it is immoral to leave these bills to our children.
The problem is that it is just not true that the Recovery Act is responsible for the nation's projected deficits.
According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Recovery Act and even TARP (the bank bail-out) are not responsible for projected deficits. That is because these policies are short term.
It's long term policies, like the high income Bush tax cuts, that stay in the system and remain unpaid for, that drive deficits.
The Great Recession played a major role by reducing tax revenues and triggering automatic stabilizers, existing counter cyclical laws, like unemployment compensation and food stamps, that automatically increase federal spending during a downturn and then decrease spending during a recovery. Check out the chart by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) that illustrates that absent the Bush era tax cuts, the wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan and the downturn, there would be virtually no deficit.
 |
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Corinthian College Inc. manipulates student loan default rates
By Stephen Burd
In examining the student loan default rate data that the U.S. Department of Education recently released, it’s hard not to marvel at the success that Corinthian Colleges has had in driving down its schools’ two-year cohort default rates.
The for-profit higher education corporation’s two-year rates have plunged across the board, with most of them dropping by double digits. For example, the company’s Everest College campus in Thornton, Colorado saw its rates plummet, from 27.3 percent in 2009 to 3.7 percent in 2010.
Similarly, at Everest Institute in Pittsburgh, the rate dropped from 25.2 percent to a remarkably low 1.1 percent. [The company has been much less successful in lowering its schools’ 3-year default rates. Those were 34.9 percent at the Thornton campus and 28.6 percent in Pittsburgh. But the government won’t start holding schools accountable for these rates until 2014.]
How did Corinthian’s leaders achieve this remarkable feat?
Did they do it by:
A. Radically improving the quality of the programs their schools offer to ensure that their graduates have the skills they need to obtain gainful employment in their fields of study?
B. Slashing prices so that students don’t have to take on so much debt?
C. Overhauling their schools’ recruiting practices to ensure that they enroll only students who they know can succeed in their programs?
The correct answer is “none of the above.” Instead, as the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has documented, Corinthian officials have engaged in a no-holds-barred campaign to drive down their schools’ rates by pushing former students to obtain temporary forbearances and deferments on their loans. The company’s sole purpose has been to prevent these borrowers from going into default during the current two-year window when the Education Department holds schools responsible for their rates.
As long as borrowers are in deferment or forbearance, they are not required to make payments on their loans and are not in danger of defaulting. Yet federal law mandates that the Education Department include such borrowers among those who are successfully repaying their loans in the default rate calculation. As a result, colleges can artificially lower their rates by persuading their former students to take advantage of these options.
And while this may look like a win-win for both the company’s schools and their former students, that’s not the case for many of these borrowers. While putting federal student loans into forbearance allows borrowers to stop making payments temporarily, interest continues to accrue on the loans, ballooning the size of the overall debt load. The same goes for deferments on unsubsidized federal loans. Many of these borrowers could be better off making graduated or extended repayments, consolidating their loans, or entering into the Income Based Repayment Program, which would allow them to pay back their debt as a percentage of their income.
Corinthian hasn’t exactly kept its efforts secret. In fact, company officials have been quite open about their intentions with investors. But they haven’t revealed much about how they put their plan into action. So how did they do it? The answer can be found in the report (see pages 181-184) that the Senate HELP committee released in July on its investigation into the for-profit higher education industry. Citing internal company records that the committee obtained from Corinthian, the report shows the extraordinary lengths that Corinthian has gone to achieve its aim:
As part of these efforts, Corinthian started offering former students gift cards to McDonald’s to get them to contact the call center. According to the report, the company made this offer “by e-mail and mobile phone text messages, and the messages explicitly referred to postponing student loan payments.” Meanwhile, employees who met their targets were showered with praise, while those who failed were taken to task:
A numbers game, indeed. By pushing former students to get forbearances and deferments on their loans, Corinthian has been able to artificially lower its schools’ rates and make sure that these institutions continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student aid funds each year.
In examining the student loan default rate data that the U.S. Department of Education recently released, it’s hard not to marvel at the success that Corinthian Colleges has had in driving down its schools’ two-year cohort default rates.
The for-profit higher education corporation’s two-year rates have plunged across the board, with most of them dropping by double digits. For example, the company’s Everest College campus in Thornton, Colorado saw its rates plummet, from 27.3 percent in 2009 to 3.7 percent in 2010.
Similarly, at Everest Institute in Pittsburgh, the rate dropped from 25.2 percent to a remarkably low 1.1 percent. [The company has been much less successful in lowering its schools’ 3-year default rates. Those were 34.9 percent at the Thornton campus and 28.6 percent in Pittsburgh. But the government won’t start holding schools accountable for these rates until 2014.]
How did Corinthian’s leaders achieve this remarkable feat?
Did they do it by:
A. Radically improving the quality of the programs their schools offer to ensure that their graduates have the skills they need to obtain gainful employment in their fields of study?
B. Slashing prices so that students don’t have to take on so much debt?
C. Overhauling their schools’ recruiting practices to ensure that they enroll only students who they know can succeed in their programs?
The correct answer is “none of the above.” Instead, as the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions has documented, Corinthian officials have engaged in a no-holds-barred campaign to drive down their schools’ rates by pushing former students to obtain temporary forbearances and deferments on their loans. The company’s sole purpose has been to prevent these borrowers from going into default during the current two-year window when the Education Department holds schools responsible for their rates.
As long as borrowers are in deferment or forbearance, they are not required to make payments on their loans and are not in danger of defaulting. Yet federal law mandates that the Education Department include such borrowers among those who are successfully repaying their loans in the default rate calculation. As a result, colleges can artificially lower their rates by persuading their former students to take advantage of these options.
And while this may look like a win-win for both the company’s schools and their former students, that’s not the case for many of these borrowers. While putting federal student loans into forbearance allows borrowers to stop making payments temporarily, interest continues to accrue on the loans, ballooning the size of the overall debt load. The same goes for deferments on unsubsidized federal loans. Many of these borrowers could be better off making graduated or extended repayments, consolidating their loans, or entering into the Income Based Repayment Program, which would allow them to pay back their debt as a percentage of their income.
Corinthian hasn’t exactly kept its efforts secret. In fact, company officials have been quite open about their intentions with investors. But they haven’t revealed much about how they put their plan into action. So how did they do it? The answer can be found in the report (see pages 181-184) that the Senate HELP committee released in July on its investigation into the for-profit higher education industry. Citing internal company records that the committee obtained from Corinthian, the report shows the extraordinary lengths that Corinthian has gone to achieve its aim:
To accomplish a lower reported default rate, Corinthian hired three contractors. One was General Revenue Corporation, which devoted 60 full-time employees to call former Corinthian students who were late making payments but not yet in default. The company also hired two firms, ROI and TEAM Enterprises, to send out 30 or more people to knock on former students’ doors to secure ‘cures.’ This same document reveals that students in late stages of delinquency but not yet in default -- a period during which they are the biggest threat to Corinthian’s default rate – could be contacted up to 110 times per month. Another internal document shows that, in order to achieve the company’s desired default rate, the call center run by General Revenue Corporation would make between 2 and 2.5 million calls a year, or 429 calls per employee per day to former Corinthian students. [Emphasis added]
Corinthian also built its own internal default-management operation, complete with a call center and dozens of employees. Documents show that the default-management operations at Corinthian are run with the same high-pressure sales environment as the recruiting department. Compensation is directly tied to the number of students an employee successfully eliminates from the company’s default rate.
As part of these efforts, Corinthian started offering former students gift cards to McDonald’s to get them to contact the call center. According to the report, the company made this offer “by e-mail and mobile phone text messages, and the messages explicitly referred to postponing student loan payments.” Meanwhile, employees who met their targets were showered with praise, while those who failed were taken to task:
E-mails show that managers pushed employees to secure as many ‘cures’ as possible. “Team Central…you did it!” reads one e-mail sent to dozens of line-level default management employees, “We cured 243 students on Wednesday…our Division is leading [Corinthian Colleges] and that is a direct reflection of your daily efforts to drive down our CDR [cohort default rate].”
In addition to this message of encouragement, other e-mails demonstrate a willingness to reprimand employees if targets are not hit:“Tuesday saw the lowest number of staff calling in the past several days. This led to less calls and less students we talked to. We all know two truths: This must be a campus-wide effort and this is definitely a numbers game.”
A numbers game, indeed. By pushing former students to get forbearances and deferments on their loans, Corinthian has been able to artificially lower its schools’ rates and make sure that these institutions continue to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal student aid funds each year.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Kaplan to close 9 campuses
Kaplan higher-education division will close nine campuses and consolidate four others into existing nearby locations, the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The company, owned by the Washington Post, said it would stop new enrollments at the nine campuses it is closing, but that it would continue teaching the students currently enrolled there.
Kaplan's decision comes only a month after Everest College announced that it would close its Milwaukee campus less than two years after it opened. Everest's job placement rate in Milwaukee was a dismal 5% and its drop out rate over 50%. Everest has agreed to pay off the federal loans of all of its Milwaukee students who dropped out without completing their program of study.
Kaplan's parent company did not give a reason for its decision to close the campuses or identify them, but in an Aug. 7 SEC filing it disclosed that an accrediting commission had warned three campuses (in Baltimore, Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio) that they could lose accreditation “for failure to meet certain student achievement threshold requirements” and had asked for the school to respond by September.
The loss of accreditation would mean the Kaplan campuses would no longer be eligible for Title IV loans from the Education Department, the source of nearly 90 percent of Kaplan higher-education revenue.
Kaplan was still a test-prep company when the Washington Post Company bought it in 1984, after Richard D. Simmons, the president, convinced Katharine Graham of its potential for expansion and profits.
Over the last decade, Kaplan has moved aggressively into for-profit higher education, acquiring 75 small colleges and starting the huge online Kaplan University. Now, Kaplan higher education revenues eclipse not only the test-prep operations, but all the rest of the Washington Post Company’s operations.
The Washington Post's Company chairman, Donald Graham, has emerged as the highest-profile defender of for-profit education. Together, Kaplan and the Post Company spent $350,000 on lobbying in the third quarter of 2010, more than any other higher-education company. And Mr. Graham has frequently gone to Capitol Hill to argue against the regulations in private visits with lawmakers, the first time he has lobbied directly on a federal issue in a dozen years. His newspaper, too, has editorialized against the regulations.
Four whistle-blower suits against Kaplan under the federal False Claims Act have been made public in the last few years, all making accusations that the company used deceptive practices in its quest for profits, including enrolling unqualified students and paying recruiters for each student enrolled, a practice forbidden by federal law.
In addition, the suits allege, Kaplan kept students on the books after they dropped out, inflated students’ grades and manipulated placement data to continue receiving financial aid. Three of the suits, from Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Miami, have been consolidated for trial in Miami. A fourth, from Las Vegas, is pending there.
The company said revenue at the campuses to be closed represent approximately 4 percent of total revenue for Kaplan higher education and 2 percent of the total Kaplan division, which includes other educational operations. The Post Co. said Kaplan expects to incur an estimated $18 million in restructuring costs, a portion of which would be recorded in third-quarter earnings, with the remainder recorded through the end of 2013.
Kaplan has about 70 campuses, and about a third of the division’s 67,605 students as of June 30 were on Kaplan higher-education campuses, with most of the rest of them studying through online programs.
The company, owned by the Washington Post, said it would stop new enrollments at the nine campuses it is closing, but that it would continue teaching the students currently enrolled there.
Kaplan's decision comes only a month after Everest College announced that it would close its Milwaukee campus less than two years after it opened. Everest's job placement rate in Milwaukee was a dismal 5% and its drop out rate over 50%. Everest has agreed to pay off the federal loans of all of its Milwaukee students who dropped out without completing their program of study.
Kaplan's parent company did not give a reason for its decision to close the campuses or identify them, but in an Aug. 7 SEC filing it disclosed that an accrediting commission had warned three campuses (in Baltimore, Indianapolis and Dayton, Ohio) that they could lose accreditation “for failure to meet certain student achievement threshold requirements” and had asked for the school to respond by September.
The loss of accreditation would mean the Kaplan campuses would no longer be eligible for Title IV loans from the Education Department, the source of nearly 90 percent of Kaplan higher-education revenue.
Kaplan was still a test-prep company when the Washington Post Company bought it in 1984, after Richard D. Simmons, the president, convinced Katharine Graham of its potential for expansion and profits.
Over the last decade, Kaplan has moved aggressively into for-profit higher education, acquiring 75 small colleges and starting the huge online Kaplan University. Now, Kaplan higher education revenues eclipse not only the test-prep operations, but all the rest of the Washington Post Company’s operations.
The Washington Post's Company chairman, Donald Graham, has emerged as the highest-profile defender of for-profit education. Together, Kaplan and the Post Company spent $350,000 on lobbying in the third quarter of 2010, more than any other higher-education company. And Mr. Graham has frequently gone to Capitol Hill to argue against the regulations in private visits with lawmakers, the first time he has lobbied directly on a federal issue in a dozen years. His newspaper, too, has editorialized against the regulations.
Four whistle-blower suits against Kaplan under the federal False Claims Act have been made public in the last few years, all making accusations that the company used deceptive practices in its quest for profits, including enrolling unqualified students and paying recruiters for each student enrolled, a practice forbidden by federal law.
In addition, the suits allege, Kaplan kept students on the books after they dropped out, inflated students’ grades and manipulated placement data to continue receiving financial aid. Three of the suits, from Pittsburgh, Milwaukee and Miami, have been consolidated for trial in Miami. A fourth, from Las Vegas, is pending there.
The company said revenue at the campuses to be closed represent approximately 4 percent of total revenue for Kaplan higher education and 2 percent of the total Kaplan division, which includes other educational operations. The Post Co. said Kaplan expects to incur an estimated $18 million in restructuring costs, a portion of which would be recorded in third-quarter earnings, with the remainder recorded through the end of 2013.
Kaplan has about 70 campuses, and about a third of the division’s 67,605 students as of June 30 were on Kaplan higher-education campuses, with most of the rest of them studying through online programs.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Barrett calls on Everest to pay off jobless grads loans. What will happen to the campus?
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has sent a letter to Everest College's parent company, Corinthian College Inc., requesting that it pay off the loans of its jobless Milwaukee graduates.
Corinthian, which is abandoning its Milwaukee operations after less than two years in operation, has already agreed to pay off the loans of those students who had dropped out, more than 50% of the students that it enrolled.
Barrett is right to insist that Corinthian also pay for those who graduated with Everest's worthless degrees and credits that do not transfer.
Corinthian spokepersons are disingenuous when they blame their pathetically low job placement rate, not quite 6%, on the poor economy. The Milwaukee Area Technical College has a job placement rate of 89% in the very same economy.
In addition to demanding that Corinthian pay off the jobless students' loans, the Mayor should help MATC secure favorable terms to occupy the former Everest Campus so that MATC can expand its services to students.
Dan Druml, the developer who the city assisted in developing the 6th and Mckinley site with $11
million in interest free bonds, recruited Everest to Milwaukee and defended the predatory diploma mill vigorously, calling them the right organization when he secured city approval for them to occupy his development. He needs to make amends for the problems he helped cause, including driving hundreds of very poor people even deeper into poverty, by recruiting Everest as his anchor tenant.
Mr. Druml can help rectify the damage he has inflicted on the city and its people by inviting MATC to occupy the former Everest campus. Corinthian has a nine year lease. MATC could move into the property, pay for utilities, maintenance and improvements and expand its services to students.
Druml does a lot of business in the city with the Department of City Development. He helped create the Everest problem. He should be part of the solution.
Corinthian, which is abandoning its Milwaukee operations after less than two years in operation, has already agreed to pay off the loans of those students who had dropped out, more than 50% of the students that it enrolled.
Barrett is right to insist that Corinthian also pay for those who graduated with Everest's worthless degrees and credits that do not transfer.
Corinthian spokepersons are disingenuous when they blame their pathetically low job placement rate, not quite 6%, on the poor economy. The Milwaukee Area Technical College has a job placement rate of 89% in the very same economy.
In addition to demanding that Corinthian pay off the jobless students' loans, the Mayor should help MATC secure favorable terms to occupy the former Everest Campus so that MATC can expand its services to students.
Dan Druml, the developer who the city assisted in developing the 6th and Mckinley site with $11
million in interest free bonds, recruited Everest to Milwaukee and defended the predatory diploma mill vigorously, calling them the right organization when he secured city approval for them to occupy his development. He needs to make amends for the problems he helped cause, including driving hundreds of very poor people even deeper into poverty, by recruiting Everest as his anchor tenant.
Mr. Druml can help rectify the damage he has inflicted on the city and its people by inviting MATC to occupy the former Everest campus. Corinthian has a nine year lease. MATC could move into the property, pay for utilities, maintenance and improvements and expand its services to students.
Druml does a lot of business in the city with the Department of City Development. He helped create the Everest problem. He should be part of the solution.
Friday, September 21, 2012
Will city leaders learn from Everest College debacle?
By Charlie Dee
Thank goodness Everest College is closing. This means no more Milwaukeeans will suffer from Everest selling jobless students dreams of success but delivering only crushing debt.
The Everest debacle leaves many questions, chief among them: Have public officials learned anything from Everest's failure, and do Milwaukee "leaders" owe anything to the students they helped rip off?
Clearly, Everest's business plan was to use its proximity to Milwaukee Area Technical College and its massive advertising budget to lure low-income students to maximize their federal loans, making huge profits for the college.
But it failed. Everest's job placement rate in Milwaukee was 6%, consistent with its abysmal record at other campuses across the country. Since MATC's placement rate is 89%, Everest apparently couldn't attract enough students to please its stockholders.
What makes this situation such a farce is that public officials were warned repeatedly that Everest was not a good corporate citizen and that the social costs associated with bringing Everest to Milwaukee would far outweigh any short-term economic benefit.
Ald. Milele Coggs, the Residents' Council of the nearby Hillside Neighborhood as well as MATC faculty leaders all warned Mayor Tom Barrett, Department of City Development chief Rocky Marcoux and the Board of Zoning Appeals about Everest's track record.
We documented that Everest in other states preyed on low-income students to take out huge loans, yet its student default rates were among the nation's highest while its job placement rates were among the lowest.
We explained that despite its promises to students, Everest was not properly accredited, so students couldn't transfer Everest's credits to regionally accredited institutions such as MATC, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Alverno College or Marquette University.
We offered city leaders examples of Everest's corporation being sued in numerous states, including paying $6.5 million to California to settle allegations of deceptive practices.
Despite this information, city leaders ignored the record and fell for the sales pitch of public relations firms. Everest first hired Evan Zeppos' firm to make the pitch, then later Carl Mueller's firm - big wheels in Democratic Party and corporate circles.
Big money buys strategic advice and influence with powerful people. Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce's Tim Sheehy hosted a reception to promote Everest.
The Journal Sentinel Editorial Board weighed in, urging BOZA to approve Everest's zoning request, arguing that educational quality should not determine what was a simple land use issue.
With those ducks lined up, getting city help was easy. The Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority granted $11 million in interest-free bonds to Dan Druml, the developer who recruited Everest.
Barrett remained tactfully quiet, but the people under him in City Hall did their jobs to grease the skids for Everest. Marcoux championed the project as a beneficial real estate deal until the 11th hour when he became officially "neutral."
At the BOZA meeting where the zoning was approved, board member Henry Szymanski voted for Everest's request and called it a "good plan."
However, Everest never created anywhere near the 100 full-time jobs it promised. While state regulators recently demanded that Everest pay off loans for dropouts and abandoned students, graduates are left with worthless degrees and huge debts.
Have our city's movers and shakers learned any lessons from this? Will they more critically evaluate developers' promises of jobs in the future?
And how about the lobbyists and lawyers Everest paid to provide the respectability it needed to snow City Hall? Have they learned to reject clients who are not healthy for the community, or will they go back to representing anyone who can pay their fees?
Most of all, will Congress finally pass strong federal regulations on the profit-making education industry? The Obama administration has proposed regulations while vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan opposes them.
Reprinted from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Charlie Dee recently retired from teaching at MATC and executive vice president of AFT Local 212, the faculty union.
Thank goodness Everest College is closing. This means no more Milwaukeeans will suffer from Everest selling jobless students dreams of success but delivering only crushing debt.
The Everest debacle leaves many questions, chief among them: Have public officials learned anything from Everest's failure, and do Milwaukee "leaders" owe anything to the students they helped rip off?
Clearly, Everest's business plan was to use its proximity to Milwaukee Area Technical College and its massive advertising budget to lure low-income students to maximize their federal loans, making huge profits for the college.
But it failed. Everest's job placement rate in Milwaukee was 6%, consistent with its abysmal record at other campuses across the country. Since MATC's placement rate is 89%, Everest apparently couldn't attract enough students to please its stockholders.
What makes this situation such a farce is that public officials were warned repeatedly that Everest was not a good corporate citizen and that the social costs associated with bringing Everest to Milwaukee would far outweigh any short-term economic benefit.
Ald. Milele Coggs, the Residents' Council of the nearby Hillside Neighborhood as well as MATC faculty leaders all warned Mayor Tom Barrett, Department of City Development chief Rocky Marcoux and the Board of Zoning Appeals about Everest's track record.
We documented that Everest in other states preyed on low-income students to take out huge loans, yet its student default rates were among the nation's highest while its job placement rates were among the lowest.
We explained that despite its promises to students, Everest was not properly accredited, so students couldn't transfer Everest's credits to regionally accredited institutions such as MATC, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Alverno College or Marquette University.
We offered city leaders examples of Everest's corporation being sued in numerous states, including paying $6.5 million to California to settle allegations of deceptive practices.
Despite this information, city leaders ignored the record and fell for the sales pitch of public relations firms. Everest first hired Evan Zeppos' firm to make the pitch, then later Carl Mueller's firm - big wheels in Democratic Party and corporate circles.
Big money buys strategic advice and influence with powerful people. Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce's Tim Sheehy hosted a reception to promote Everest.
The Journal Sentinel Editorial Board weighed in, urging BOZA to approve Everest's zoning request, arguing that educational quality should not determine what was a simple land use issue.
With those ducks lined up, getting city help was easy. The Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority granted $11 million in interest-free bonds to Dan Druml, the developer who recruited Everest.
Barrett remained tactfully quiet, but the people under him in City Hall did their jobs to grease the skids for Everest. Marcoux championed the project as a beneficial real estate deal until the 11th hour when he became officially "neutral."
At the BOZA meeting where the zoning was approved, board member Henry Szymanski voted for Everest's request and called it a "good plan."
However, Everest never created anywhere near the 100 full-time jobs it promised. While state regulators recently demanded that Everest pay off loans for dropouts and abandoned students, graduates are left with worthless degrees and huge debts.
Have our city's movers and shakers learned any lessons from this? Will they more critically evaluate developers' promises of jobs in the future?
And how about the lobbyists and lawyers Everest paid to provide the respectability it needed to snow City Hall? Have they learned to reject clients who are not healthy for the community, or will they go back to representing anyone who can pay their fees?
Most of all, will Congress finally pass strong federal regulations on the profit-making education industry? The Obama administration has proposed regulations while vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan opposes them.
Reprinted from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Charlie Dee recently retired from teaching at MATC and executive vice president of AFT Local 212, the faculty union.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Everest's Milwaukee campus to close
Less than two years after it opened its doors, Everest College is closing its Milwaukee campus.
AFT Local 212, Alderwoman Milele Coggs, the Hillside Residence Council and MATC's District Board Chairwoman, Ann Wilson, fought to prevent Everest from setting up shop in Milwaukee because it preys on low-income students.
We warned the city officials courting Everest that it had abysmal job placement, drop-out and graduation rates; that its student financial aid default rate was among the nation's worst; and that its credits did not transfer to most legitimate colleges and universities.
But there was too much money at stake, for Everest headquarters, Corinthian College Inc. and its stock holders, the Milwaukee developer, Dan Druml, and the lawyers and public relations firms that made money on the Everest Project.
Rather than heed our warnings Everest boosters accused us of fearing competition. But Everest never posed a threat to MATC or any other legitimate institution of higher education because it is nothing more than a diploma mill.
Everest was a danger, however, to the students that it lured into taking out huge loans for inadequate programs and a job placement record of less than 10%. Our opposition to Everest was motivated by a sincere desire to protect the low income and minority students it sought to exploit.
In the end, a lot of folks made money off Everest short-lived stay. But its students, as we predicted, were the losers. They are left with little more than broken dreams, huge debts and credits that do not transfer.
There is much more about this sordid affair than appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article. It will come out shortly. So stay tuned.
Dan Bice's article on the closing is linked here.
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
For-Profit College Claims Are 'Nonsense,' Obama Administration Says
By Chris Kirkham for the Huffington Post 9/10/12
For-profit college representatives say they shouldn't have to tell prospective students whether they are likely to afford their debts after attending school, arguing the disclosures wouldn't be helpful.
But the Department of Education says this is "nonsense," according to a filing last week, the latest round in a federal court battle between the Obama administration and a key for-profit college trade group.
At issue are rules that would require for-profit colleges to disclose statistics on how students cope with their debts after graduating or dropping out of school. The data would indicate how many students are repaying loans, and how their loan debts will compare to earnings after graduation.
For nearly three years, the administration has attempted to rein in abuses at for-profit institutions that leave students with huge debts and few job prospects. Because the industry gets most of its revenue from the federal government, in the form of Pell grants and student loans, the Department of Education has tried to gauge whether such schools are preparing students for careers that will allow them to repay debts.
In a federal court filing last month, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) argued that the student debt disclosures would not provide "any meaningful information to prospective students."
Last week, the Department of Education replied: "Plaintiff's assertion that… information on a program's repayment rate and debt-to-income ratios will not be meaningful to students, is nonsense."
The department went on to say the measurements provide "valuable information that many – if not all – prospective students considering whether to enroll in a program would like to have."
The disclosures could cast many for-profit colleges in a negative light. According to preliminary data released by the Department of Education this summer, many for-profit colleges fared poorly on the student debt measurements. Nearly two-thirds of all programs failed to meet expectations in at least one of three tests.
Read the entire article here.
For-profit college representatives say they shouldn't have to tell prospective students whether they are likely to afford their debts after attending school, arguing the disclosures wouldn't be helpful.
But the Department of Education says this is "nonsense," according to a filing last week, the latest round in a federal court battle between the Obama administration and a key for-profit college trade group.
At issue are rules that would require for-profit colleges to disclose statistics on how students cope with their debts after graduating or dropping out of school. The data would indicate how many students are repaying loans, and how their loan debts will compare to earnings after graduation.
For nearly three years, the administration has attempted to rein in abuses at for-profit institutions that leave students with huge debts and few job prospects. Because the industry gets most of its revenue from the federal government, in the form of Pell grants and student loans, the Department of Education has tried to gauge whether such schools are preparing students for careers that will allow them to repay debts.
In a federal court filing last month, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) argued that the student debt disclosures would not provide "any meaningful information to prospective students."
Last week, the Department of Education replied: "Plaintiff's assertion that… information on a program's repayment rate and debt-to-income ratios will not be meaningful to students, is nonsense."
The department went on to say the measurements provide "valuable information that many – if not all – prospective students considering whether to enroll in a program would like to have."
Read the entire article here.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Ryan's speech: ducked the tough issues and blamed others for the problems.
The party that claims to have all the answers on Medicare seemed to have no interest in sharing them with the American people at its convention on Wednesday. The session, devoted to the theme of “We Can Change It,” never went any deeper than that slogan or a few others: Reform Medicare. Strengthen Medicare. Protect Medicare.
All without the slightest hint of how that supposed reform or strengthening would take place, regarding that program and many others. “We will not duck the tough issues; we will lead,” said Representative Paul Ryan, in his speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination. “We will not spend four years blaming others; we will take responsibility.”
Sounds great, except that the speech ducked the tough issues and blamed others for the problems.
Mr. Ryan, who rose to prominence on the Republican barricades with a plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system, never uttered the word “voucher” to the convention. He said Medicare was there for his grandmother and mother, but neglected to say that he considers it too generous to be there in the same form for future grandmothers (while firmly opposing the higher taxes on the rich that could keep it strong). He never mentioned his plan to abandon Medicaid on the doorstep of the states, or that his budget wouldn’t come close to a balance for 28 years.
The reasons for that are clear: Details are a turn-off, at a boisterous convention or apparently in a full campaign. A New York Times poll last week showed that the Medicare plan advocated by Mr. Ryan and Mitt Romney was highly unpopular in the swing states of Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin. As soon as voters find out that the Republicans plan to offer retirees a fixed amount, they disapprove, clearly preferring the existing system.
The Romney campaign knows this, of course, so it has developed a counterstrategy that was fully on display at the convention for those who might have missed it on the trail: Don’t change the plans, but don’t talk about them, either. Instead, invent a phony attack on President Obama’s policies, which are public in full detail, and hope that voters get so confused that they throw up their hands and cast their vote on some other issue or on emotion.
The tactic was on display on Wednesday when Senator Marco Rubio of Florida solemnly told CBS News that Medicare will have to look different for a new generation. “Anyone who’s in favor of leaving it the way it is now is in favor of bankrupting it,” he said. Yet Mr. Ryan tried to frighten beneficiaries that evening by denouncing Mr. Obama for cutting $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for health care reform.
He didn’t say that the money would come out of hospitals and insurance companies, not benefits, and that he proposed exactly the same cut. He didn’t say that reform provides popular benefits to retirees, like the end of the prescription doughnut hole and improved preventive care. But the effect is clear: voters say in surveys that while they don’t like a Medicare voucher program, they don’t necessarily associate that with the Romney/Ryan ticket and are no less angry with Mr. Obama for his Medicare cuts. So far, the Democratic critique of Mr. Ryan’s plans has not substantially changed a very close race.
Mr. Ryan said he wouldn’t blame others, but the message was lost at a convention where the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, tore into Mr. Obama for spending too much time on his golf game and discussing his food preferences.
Did Mr. McConnell realize others were listening when he said that the country doesn’t know how the president would deal with the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts? Mr. Obama has been explicitly clear about his plans: preserve the cuts for the middle class but not for the rich. Not mentioning that fact, and pretending that there is some doubt about it, is central to the Republican Party strategy of inventing an alternate reality.
Republicans also aren’t mentioning that their proposal to eliminate federal control of the Medicaid program for the poor would not only damage the health care of millions of struggling Americans but would also affect middle-class families who have relied on the program to pay for nursing home care.
The Romney/Ryan plan would eliminate the protection that keeps a married couple from impoverishing itself to qualify for nursing home coverage.
The party platform mentions a few Medicaid details, but not a word of the real plan has been uttered at the convention microphone. The best way to duck the tough issues, apparently, is simply to claim very loudly that you are doing the opposite.
New York Times editorial, August 29, 2012
Follow the money: For-profit colleges pumping campaign money to foes of regulation
For-profit colleges and universities and their industry association gave at least $694,829 to political candidates through May 31, much of it to members of Congress who oppose greater regulation of the industry, including proposed curbs on aggressive recruiting of veterans with G.I. Bill benefits.
Among the industry’s principal givers are the Apollo Group (parent company of the University of Phoenix), which has contributed $259,901 to candidates; APSCU, which has given $184,500; and DeVry, Westwood College, Argosy and Art Institutes parent Education Management Corporation, and Everest parent Corinthian Colleges. The Art Institute and Everest have recently established operations in Milwaukee.
The for-profits have contributed to Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and nothing to Barack Obama, whose administration has been largely seen as cracking down on them.
The Association of Private Sector Colleges and University, or APSCU, and its members gave to Senate and House members who have spoken out against the so-called gainful-employment regulation, under which educational programs would lose access to federal aid if their graduates fail to earn enough to repay their student loans. Last month, the federal government reported that five percent of career-training programs at both nonprofit and for-profit schools do not meet that test.
The rule is in limbo after a federal judge this month struck down the way the Department of Education calculated the ratio of debt to income, though he affirmed that it could proceed with the rest.
For-profit colleges gave financial support to lawmakers who wrote letters critical of the regulation or who attended a rally on the west lawn of the Capitol called to protest it, and to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who said it would discriminate against nonwhite and low-income students.
Also receiving contributions were members of Congress who oppose restrictions on aggressive recruiting by for-profit colleges of veterans who use G.I. Bill benefits, criticized a General Accounting Office report about student-recruiting fraud, or voted against putting for-profits under the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and both Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate education committees. In all, the for-profit schools backed at least 93 representatives and senators or candidates for Congress, 53 of them Republicans, according to federal disclosure forms.
Among those are Republicans George Allen and Josh Mandel, who are challenging Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), respectively, both of whom have favored reforms to regulate the way veterans can be recruited by for-profit schools.
Members of the House who spoke at a 2010 rally against the gainful-employment regulation received campaign-finance contributions, however, including Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), Ted Deutsch (D-Fla.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.). Guthrie and Thompson also criticized the GAO for an undercover investigation that found recruiting abuses at for-profit colleges, which the industry attacked for transcription errors and other problems, but whose conclusion was not changed.
House Oversight & Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) also criticized the GAO report, as did House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.), and committee member Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). Issa, Kline and McCarthy also received campaign contributions from for-profit colleges or their industry association.
Other members of Congress who raised questions about the gainful-employment rule got money, too, including Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Ron Kind (D-Wisc.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) in the House, and, in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have attacked the gainful-employment proposal and other regulations as discriminatory, as for-profit colleges enroll disproportionate numbers of low-income students and nonwhites. Among Black Caucus members who got financial support from the for-profit colleges were Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) and Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.).
Members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee received donations, too, including Kline, Andrews, Biggert, McCarthy, Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Joe Heck (R-Nev.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.).
So did members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, including Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
For-profits also gave to U.S. Rep. Jim Moran Jr. (D-Va.), whose brother Brian is chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party as well as APSCU’s vice president for government relations; Republican congressional candidate from Arizona Kirk Adams, an alumnus of the University of Phoenix; and Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), cofounder of the Congressional E-Learning Caucus.
At least one senator who’s been critical of for-profits received financial support anyway: Marco Rubio (D-Fla.) a potential vice-presidential running mate to Romney.
This post is based on an article by Jon Marcus in the Hechinger Report, July 12, 2012
Among the industry’s principal givers are the Apollo Group (parent company of the University of Phoenix), which has contributed $259,901 to candidates; APSCU, which has given $184,500; and DeVry, Westwood College, Argosy and Art Institutes parent Education Management Corporation, and Everest parent Corinthian Colleges. The Art Institute and Everest have recently established operations in Milwaukee.
The for-profits have contributed to Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney and nothing to Barack Obama, whose administration has been largely seen as cracking down on them.
The Association of Private Sector Colleges and University, or APSCU, and its members gave to Senate and House members who have spoken out against the so-called gainful-employment regulation, under which educational programs would lose access to federal aid if their graduates fail to earn enough to repay their student loans. Last month, the federal government reported that five percent of career-training programs at both nonprofit and for-profit schools do not meet that test.
The rule is in limbo after a federal judge this month struck down the way the Department of Education calculated the ratio of debt to income, though he affirmed that it could proceed with the rest.
For-profit colleges gave financial support to lawmakers who wrote letters critical of the regulation or who attended a rally on the west lawn of the Capitol called to protest it, and to members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who said it would discriminate against nonwhite and low-income students.
Also receiving contributions were members of Congress who oppose restrictions on aggressive recruiting by for-profit colleges of veterans who use G.I. Bill benefits, criticized a General Accounting Office report about student-recruiting fraud, or voted against putting for-profits under the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and both Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate education committees. In all, the for-profit schools backed at least 93 representatives and senators or candidates for Congress, 53 of them Republicans, according to federal disclosure forms.
Among those are Republicans George Allen and Josh Mandel, who are challenging Senator Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), respectively, both of whom have favored reforms to regulate the way veterans can be recruited by for-profit schools.
Members of the House who spoke at a 2010 rally against the gainful-employment regulation received campaign-finance contributions, however, including Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), Ted Deutsch (D-Fla.), Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.). Guthrie and Thompson also criticized the GAO for an undercover investigation that found recruiting abuses at for-profit colleges, which the industry attacked for transcription errors and other problems, but whose conclusion was not changed.
House Oversight & Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) also criticized the GAO report, as did House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.), and committee member Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.). Issa, Kline and McCarthy also received campaign contributions from for-profit colleges or their industry association.
Other members of Congress who raised questions about the gainful-employment rule got money, too, including Jason Altmire (D-Pa.), Judy Biggert (R-Ill.), André Carson (D-Ind.), Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), Ron Kind (D-Wisc.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) in the House, and, in the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus have attacked the gainful-employment proposal and other regulations as discriminatory, as for-profit colleges enroll disproportionate numbers of low-income students and nonwhites. Among Black Caucus members who got financial support from the for-profit colleges were Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), Ed Pastor (D-Ariz.) and Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.).
Members of the House Education and the Workforce Committee received donations, too, including Kline, Andrews, Biggert, McCarthy, Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.), Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Joe Heck (R-Nev.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.), Todd Rokita (R-Ind.), and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.).
So did members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, including Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.).
For-profits also gave to U.S. Rep. Jim Moran Jr. (D-Va.), whose brother Brian is chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party as well as APSCU’s vice president for government relations; Republican congressional candidate from Arizona Kirk Adams, an alumnus of the University of Phoenix; and Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), cofounder of the Congressional E-Learning Caucus.
At least one senator who’s been critical of for-profits received financial support anyway: Marco Rubio (D-Fla.) a potential vice-presidential running mate to Romney.
This post is based on an article by Jon Marcus in the Hechinger Report, July 12, 2012
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
For profit colleges pay CEOs based on profits, not student success
Top executives at major for-profit colleges make millions of dollars in annual compensation -- primarily from taxpayer subsidies -– yet most of their pay is unrelated to student achievement, according to preliminary findings from a congressional investigation.
Chris Kirkham reports in the Huffington Post that a report from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, found that publicly traded college corporations calculate executive compensation "predominantly on the profitability of their companies rather than the success of their students."
"This is especially troubling given the billions of taxpayer dollars flowing into these institutions and the serious financial risks to students who go through these programs," the report concluded.
For-profit colleges receive much of their revenues from federal financial aid: student loans, Pell grants and military educational benefits. Yet students often fare poorly, dropping out in large numbers and defaulting on federal loans at double the rate of their counterparts at public institutions.
Cummings sent letters in December to 13 for-profit college corporations, seeking information on how the quality of education and student performance are tied to what he termed "lavish" executive pay at the schools. Chief executive officers at several for-profit education companies take in much more than presidents at some of the most prestigious U.S. private universities.
Todd S. Nelson, the former chief executive and now chairman of Education Management Corp., the nation's second-largest operator of for-profit colleges, took in more than $13.1 million last year. The highest-paid Ivy League president, Richard C. Levin of Yale University, received $1.6 million in compensation, according to tax filings.
In a preliminary report sent to Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee on Friday, congressional staff found that "the single most significant measure for determining executive compensation at these schools is corporate profitability, including factors such as operating income, earnings, profits, operating margins, earnings per share, net cash flow, and revenue."
The report found that 10 of the 13 companies considered profitability for at least 70 percent of executive pay. The other three companies did not provide enough information to determine how student success factored into executive pay, according to the report.
For-profit colleges have increased revenues over the years by rapidly expanding their enrollments.
From 1999 to 2009, the number of students attending for-profit colleges more than tripled, far outpacing the growth of traditional higher education, which grew by a fifth, according to an analysis of federal data from the Education Trust, a student advocacy group.
Although about 12 percent of college students nationwide attend for-profit schools, the sector is responsible for more than 45 percent of federal loan defaults.
In many cases, companies had executive compensation documents that made only "vague references" to student performance and "failed to indicate the specific extent to which these measures affect executive compensation," the report said.
Career Education Corp., which owns the Le Cordon Bleu chain of culinary schools, 75 percent of executives' bonus pay was based on meeting profit goals, according to the report. The remaining 25 percent of executive compensation was based on "individual executive performance factors."
There were several optional criteria to determine an executive's performance at the company, including student graduation rates and career placement rates. But the company provided no details on whether those student performance goals were actually considered, according to the congressional report.
Nonetheless, all executives at the company reached 100 percent of their individual goals in 2010, the report found. Last year, the chief executive of Career Education Corp., Gary McCullough, resigned after an internal investigation found that the employees were artificially inflating job placement rates at some health and arts programs to remain in good standing with college accreditors -– and continue to be eligible for federal aid dollars.
Representatives from Career Education Corp. and 11 other companies mentioned in the report did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
A spokeswoman for DeVry Inc., Jennifer Dooley, wrote in an e-mail that "our first obligation is to our students, and our shareholders understand this." She continued: "They know that only by focusing on serving our students, and on delivering value over the long term, will we ensure our economic viability."
Kirkham's article is linked here.
Chris Kirkham reports in the Huffington Post that a report from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, found that publicly traded college corporations calculate executive compensation "predominantly on the profitability of their companies rather than the success of their students."
"This is especially troubling given the billions of taxpayer dollars flowing into these institutions and the serious financial risks to students who go through these programs," the report concluded.
For-profit colleges receive much of their revenues from federal financial aid: student loans, Pell grants and military educational benefits. Yet students often fare poorly, dropping out in large numbers and defaulting on federal loans at double the rate of their counterparts at public institutions.
Cummings sent letters in December to 13 for-profit college corporations, seeking information on how the quality of education and student performance are tied to what he termed "lavish" executive pay at the schools. Chief executive officers at several for-profit education companies take in much more than presidents at some of the most prestigious U.S. private universities.
Todd S. Nelson, the former chief executive and now chairman of Education Management Corp., the nation's second-largest operator of for-profit colleges, took in more than $13.1 million last year. The highest-paid Ivy League president, Richard C. Levin of Yale University, received $1.6 million in compensation, according to tax filings.
In a preliminary report sent to Democratic members of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee on Friday, congressional staff found that "the single most significant measure for determining executive compensation at these schools is corporate profitability, including factors such as operating income, earnings, profits, operating margins, earnings per share, net cash flow, and revenue."
For-profit colleges have increased revenues over the years by rapidly expanding their enrollments.
From 1999 to 2009, the number of students attending for-profit colleges more than tripled, far outpacing the growth of traditional higher education, which grew by a fifth, according to an analysis of federal data from the Education Trust, a student advocacy group.
Although about 12 percent of college students nationwide attend for-profit schools, the sector is responsible for more than 45 percent of federal loan defaults.
In many cases, companies had executive compensation documents that made only "vague references" to student performance and "failed to indicate the specific extent to which these measures affect executive compensation," the report said.
Career Education Corp., which owns the Le Cordon Bleu chain of culinary schools, 75 percent of executives' bonus pay was based on meeting profit goals, according to the report. The remaining 25 percent of executive compensation was based on "individual executive performance factors."
There were several optional criteria to determine an executive's performance at the company, including student graduation rates and career placement rates. But the company provided no details on whether those student performance goals were actually considered, according to the congressional report.
Nonetheless, all executives at the company reached 100 percent of their individual goals in 2010, the report found. Last year, the chief executive of Career Education Corp., Gary McCullough, resigned after an internal investigation found that the employees were artificially inflating job placement rates at some health and arts programs to remain in good standing with college accreditors -– and continue to be eligible for federal aid dollars.
Representatives from Career Education Corp. and 11 other companies mentioned in the report did not respond to requests for comment Friday.
A spokeswoman for DeVry Inc., Jennifer Dooley, wrote in an e-mail that "our first obligation is to our students, and our shareholders understand this." She continued: "They know that only by focusing on serving our students, and on delivering value over the long term, will we ensure our economic viability."
Kirkham's article is linked here.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Republicans "let them eat cake" proposal raises taxes on poorest families
It turn outs that there are some tax increases that Republicans support. Not the modest increases proposed by President Obama on America's richest families whose incomes have exploded over the past two decades creating the greatest income inequality since the roaring Twenties.
No, Senate Republicans are proposing to extend tax cuts for the nation's affluent families scheduled to expire Jan. 1, while at the same time allowing a series of tax cuts for the working poor and the middle class to end.
In all, the Republican plan would extend tax cuts for 2.7 million affluent families while allowing tax breaks to expire for 13 million on the bottom of the income spectrum. Some might call this "class war."
For more detail read the New York Times article that is linked here.
No, Senate Republicans are proposing to extend tax cuts for the nation's affluent families scheduled to expire Jan. 1, while at the same time allowing a series of tax cuts for the working poor and the middle class to end.
In all, the Republican plan would extend tax cuts for 2.7 million affluent families while allowing tax breaks to expire for 13 million on the bottom of the income spectrum. Some might call this "class war."
For more detail read the New York Times article that is linked here.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Two year colleges are solution to nation's economic woes
We recently learned that Wisconsin had the 42nd worst job creation record in the nation last year. Unemployment and underemployment remain unacceptably high.
At the same time, area employers are facing a skilled labor shortage. They simply cannot find the middle skilled workers they need to grow their businesses.
According to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera investing in two year colleges like MATC is the solution.
He writes: "Community colleges can be our salvation...and approvingly quotes Eduardo Padrón, the President of Miami Dade, the nation's largest two year college, “'Community colleges are the great American invention in terms of education. Their raison d’être has always been to help grease the wheels of social mobility...with the skills gap such a pressing problem — and a high school education so clearly inadequate for the modern economy — the task of teaching those skills is falling to community colleges. There really isn’t another institution as well positioned to play that role.'"
Unfortunately Nocera says: "Many state governments have ravaged the budgets of their community college systems..." Wisconsin, for example, slashed technical college funding by 30% in its last biennial budget. the largest cut in the Wisconsin Technical College Systems' history.
Nocera concludes: "Given what’s at stake, it would be hard to imagine anything more shortsighted than paring back support for community colleges."
His entire column is linked here.
At the same time, area employers are facing a skilled labor shortage. They simply cannot find the middle skilled workers they need to grow their businesses.
According to New York Times columnist Joe Nocera investing in two year colleges like MATC is the solution.
He writes: "Community colleges can be our salvation...and approvingly quotes Eduardo Padrón, the President of Miami Dade, the nation's largest two year college, “'Community colleges are the great American invention in terms of education. Their raison d’être has always been to help grease the wheels of social mobility...with the skills gap such a pressing problem — and a high school education so clearly inadequate for the modern economy — the task of teaching those skills is falling to community colleges. There really isn’t another institution as well positioned to play that role.'"
Unfortunately Nocera says: "Many state governments have ravaged the budgets of their community college systems..." Wisconsin, for example, slashed technical college funding by 30% in its last biennial budget. the largest cut in the Wisconsin Technical College Systems' history.
Nocera concludes: "Given what’s at stake, it would be hard to imagine anything more shortsighted than paring back support for community colleges."
His entire column is linked here.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Soaring college costs promote inequality
Nicholas Lehman of the New Yorker has written an important column about how the soaring costs of higher education are perpetuating growing inequality.
Lehman writes:
"In higher education, the United States may be on its way to becoming more like the rest of the world, with a small group of schools controlling access to life membership in the élite. And higher education is becoming more like other areas of American life, with the fortunate few institutions distancing themselves ever further from the many. All those things which commencement speakers talk about—personal growth, critical-thinking skills, intellectual exploration, breadth of learning—will survive at the top institutions, but other colleges will come under increased pressure to adopt the model of trade schools. Student loans open access to students, and give colleges more freedom. Obama and Romney will have plenty to disagree about, and it’s good that the interest rate on student loans isn’t on the list. For the federal government to pump extra tuition money into the system, in the form of low-cost loans, in order to spread opportunity more widely, and to allow more schools to provide more than skills instruction, seems like a small price to pay for the kind of society it buys." -
The entire article is linked here.
Lehman writes:
"In higher education, the United States may be on its way to becoming more like the rest of the world, with a small group of schools controlling access to life membership in the élite. And higher education is becoming more like other areas of American life, with the fortunate few institutions distancing themselves ever further from the many. All those things which commencement speakers talk about—personal growth, critical-thinking skills, intellectual exploration, breadth of learning—will survive at the top institutions, but other colleges will come under increased pressure to adopt the model of trade schools. Student loans open access to students, and give colleges more freedom. Obama and Romney will have plenty to disagree about, and it’s good that the interest rate on student loans isn’t on the list. For the federal government to pump extra tuition money into the system, in the form of low-cost loans, in order to spread opportunity more widely, and to allow more schools to provide more than skills instruction, seems like a small price to pay for the kind of society it buys." -
The entire article is linked here.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Walker’s “Beer and Brat Summit” – a state-sanctioned campaign event
Following his successful victory in Wisconsin's recall election, Governor Scott Walker called on Wisconsinites to "work together" and announced a beer and brat summit.
Badger Democracy's review of the events' sponsors reveals that the Walker Administration is holding a camapign event disguised as a cookout.
Check out the list of the Summit's sponsors. It is a who's who of Walker campaign contributors.The Badger Democracy link is here.
Monday, June 4, 2012
For the sake of public education (and Wisconsin's future) vote to remove Walker on June 5th
Conservative education expert and former private school voucher advocate, Diane Ravitch, writes:
If you are concerned about the future of public education in Wisconsin, vote to oust Gov. Scott Walker.
Since his election in 2010, he has proved himself to be a steadfast enemy of the public schools. In the world according to Walker, the best way to reform public education is to demoralize its teachers, attack the teachers' union and hand over more taxpayer dollars to privately managed charters and voucher schools...
Walker thinks that he will improve education by getting rid of the union, which is the collective voice of the state's teachers.The nation's highest performing states-Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut-have strong unions, while the lowest performing states-in the Deep South-have weak unions or none at all. Very likely, what Walker really wants is to remove the teachers' voice when legislators are cutting the schools' budget. The best way to silence the strongest voice for public education in Madison is to weaken the teachers' union.
...No high-performing nation in the world demoralizes its teachers and creates alternatives to public education. The best performing nations in the world have built a strong public education system. They respect their teachers. They do not judge them by student test scores. They do not launch public campaigns against their unions (in high-performing Finland, all the teachers and principals belong to the same union). The most successful nations recognize the importance of having teachers and principals who are dedicated professionals, not a revolving door of young college graduates. They understand that successful schools establish a culture of collaboration, not a culture of competition.
The entire op ed is linked here.
If you are concerned about the future of public education in Wisconsin, vote to oust Gov. Scott Walker.
Since his election in 2010, he has proved himself to be a steadfast enemy of the public schools. In the world according to Walker, the best way to reform public education is to demoralize its teachers, attack the teachers' union and hand over more taxpayer dollars to privately managed charters and voucher schools...
Walker thinks that he will improve education by getting rid of the union, which is the collective voice of the state's teachers.The nation's highest performing states-Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut-have strong unions, while the lowest performing states-in the Deep South-have weak unions or none at all. Very likely, what Walker really wants is to remove the teachers' voice when legislators are cutting the schools' budget. The best way to silence the strongest voice for public education in Madison is to weaken the teachers' union.
...No high-performing nation in the world demoralizes its teachers and creates alternatives to public education. The best performing nations in the world have built a strong public education system. They respect their teachers. They do not judge them by student test scores. They do not launch public campaigns against their unions (in high-performing Finland, all the teachers and principals belong to the same union). The most successful nations recognize the importance of having teachers and principals who are dedicated professionals, not a revolving door of young college graduates. They understand that successful schools establish a culture of collaboration, not a culture of competition.
The entire op ed is linked here.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Walker embraces union busters and their union busting strategies
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has adopted a Southern strategy—touting the “accomplishments” of the most conservative governors from the states of the old Confederacy—as he enters the critical final weeks of the historic Wisconsin recall election.
Walker, who has aggressively challenged Wisconsin’s progressive tradition, is bringing in Southern governors who promote union-busting policies and economic-development strategies that raid Northern states and move jobs to states where organized labor is restrained and wages are kept low.
Next week, the Wisconsin governor who last year led the fight to strip collective-bargaining rights away from public employees and teachers, will campaign with South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who proudly describes herself as “a union buster.”
In an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Wednesday (following an interview with Walker), Haley proudly declared: “There’s a reason South Carolina’s the new ‘it’ state. It’s because we’re a union buster.”
Haley has been the chief proponent of so-called “right to work” laws that undermine the collective bargaining and organizing rights of unions. She dismissed union members as “thugs” and said: “I’m not going to stop beating up on the unions.”
That’s a big deal in the Wisconsin recall race, as Walker has been under pressure to explain his appearance in a video where he and a wealthy donor are seen discussing strategies to make Wisconsin a low-wage “right to work” state.
Walker says that he does not plan at this point to promote the sort of “right to work” legislation that he once championed as a state legislator—and that his chief legislative allies are currently talking up. But he has not said he would veto a right-to-work law. And Walker has shown no qualms about campaigning side-by-side with the nation’s most ardent advocate of right-to-work laws.
Haley has gone out of her way in recent months to identify herself as the nation’s leading champion of right-to-work laws—and, arguably, it’s most prominent and militant critic of organized labor. She says: “Unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina.”
The South Carolina governor recently promoted a package of “reforms” that will give South Carolina the toughest right-to-work laws in the nation.
And Haley wants to take right-to-work national: “Barack Obama doesn’t appreciate right-to-work states. Mitt Romney appreciates right-to-work states,” she said after endorsing Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. “I need a partner in the White House.”
In fact, Haley needs a lot more than that. Her “it” state has experienced a 4 percent decline in wages since she took over—no small matter in a state that has historically had some of the lowest wages, weakest public services and most dismal education scores in the United States. Indeed, South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian says of Haley: “Rather than campaigning with Walker or Romney, she ought to sit in a classroom in an under-performing school.”
Haley has opted to skip the school visit and campaign in Wisconsin.
And that raises some questions for Scott Walker.
The governor of Wisconsin—who told Congress and the people of Wisconsin he’s not anti-union—ought to be asked what he thinks about Nikki Haley’s “unions are not welcome” rhetoric.
The Wisconsin governor should also be asked about the lengths to which a state should go to become what Haley describes as an “it” state.
Should unions be busted?
Should education funding be cut?
Should public services be shut down?
And should economic development be based on raiding other states?
That question came into stark relief Wednesday, when Walker scheduled stops in Wisconsin with Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal.
Jindal has been a leading proponent of “corporate raiding” strategies that are used to move jobs from Northern states to the South.
And Jindal’s Louisiana has raided Wisconsin.
In 2009, Gardner Denver closed its manufacturing facility in Sheboygan, Wisconsin—where the company and its predecessor (Thomas Industries) had produced pumps and air compressors for seventy years—and left 366 workers, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union members and non-union employees, without jobs.
Where did there jobs go? Monroe, Louisiana.
Why? Because Louisiana state government gave away massive tax breaks and other benefits to the company.
“Gardner Denver said Louisiana would reimburse the company for most of the cost of moving equipment and staff to Monroe, provide yearly payroll and sales tax rebates and help the company with recruiting and training,” reported the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2009. “The City of Monroe also plans to help with the construction of a 124,000-square-foot factory adjoining the company’s plant.”
Jindal, who will be in Wisconsin to raise money for Walker’s campaign, won’t be visiting Sheboygan, which took a hard hit when Louisiana raided its industrial base and continues to experience higher-than-average unemployment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)