The Educated Reporter: ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

The Educated Reporter: ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

ISO: More reporting on for-profit colleges.

Justin Pope at the Associated Press has been doing terrific work on for-profit colleges. On the face of it, it looks like they have an incentive to take lots of low-income students (and their associated aid) even if they have little chance of succeeding. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective.

I love the Washington Post Company, I owe it my career and my social life, Don Graham is wonderful in many ways, and we can thank Kaplan for helping to subsidize the publication of a great (though thinning, grrrrr) newspaper. However, a 23 percent three-year default rate at Kaplan University? Default rates aren’t everything, and they are going to be high when you enroll the neediest students, but there is a lot to plumb here. We need more in-depth stories, with real people. Who is attending these schools, why are they expensive, what makes it hard to finish and pay back loans?