The Condition of Education: Private, For-Profit Colleges and Universities
This post is part of a series on the annual Condition of Education put out by the National Center for Education Statistics. See earlier posts on the dramatic increase in Master’s degrees awarded in education, the college wage premium, economic and racial segregation in our schools, andstudent/teacher ratios.
Private, for-profit higher education institutions are not a new phenomenon, but they seem to be getting a lot more attention lately. Frontline devoted an episode to the rise of for-profits, the Department of Education is in the middle of drafting new regulatory requirements to govern them, and stock market analysts are weighing inby calling the for-profit higher education industry the next big bubble.
While for-profits enroll only about 7 percent of all undergraduate students, their growth rate far outpaces public and private, not-for-profit institutions. Public college and university enrollment increased 19 percent from 2000 to
QUICK Hits
How can teaching be like the Lemony Snicket novels? Sometimes, days are just a Series of Unfortunate Events. (ABCDE blog)
What happens when a great teacher leads students through a discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird—45 years after they left her class? (A Place at the Table)
Could NYC’s School of One have developed the Killer App? (edReformer)
What does your sticky note say? (Organized Chaos)
The Better Mousetrap Problem
Discussions of technology and higher education tend to veer from “This. Changes.Everything” techno-triumphalism to assertions that using the Internet to educate people is clearly a plot to turn higher education into a cheap corporate commodity on par with bulk packages of frozen french fries. As is often the case, the most interesting work in the field right now sits close to the equipoise between the two, as Ben Miller documents in his new report, The Course of Innovation, which you should read.
The report focuses on the National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), which has spent the last decade working with scores of colleges and universities to transform mostly introductory college courses with technology. NCAT’s track record is impressive. To the extent that such things can be proven without elaborate randomized control trials, they’ve proven that thoughtful, faculty-driven course redesign can simultaneously