Saturday, July 3, 2010

Speak into the webcam: the state's community colleges partner with a dubious, "online" for-profit outfit

Is outsourcing community college education serving students? (LA Times)
By Michael Hiltzik

     …It turns out that California is trying to outsource our public higher education system to the for-profit college industry. What is surprising is that this is happening without any evidence that the affected students would be well served.
     The issue has been cast into high relief by a two-year agreement struck last year between Jack Scott, the chancellor of the California Community Colleges, and Kaplan University, an aggressively marketed institution that does most of its pedagogy online.
     Under a memorandum of understanding, or MOU, students who need a course to meet their associate degree requirements but can't get it at their community college ... would be able to take it at Kaplan.
     …[T]here's no guarantee that the Kaplan course will be accepted by any four-year college the student transfers to, such as a UC or Cal State University campus.… The deal was reached behind the faculty's back, even though such arrangements are customarily brought to the teachers for discussion.
     …The 112-college system, which serves nearly 3 million Californians, sustained a budget cut of $520 million, or 8% of its budget, in 2009-10. Course sections were reduced by 5% statewide, Scott's office says, with as many as half of new students trying to enroll in a class being turned away at some campuses.
. . .
     Kaplan saw an opportunity in the resulting vacuum. "We recognized the challenges that the community college system is experiencing," says Gregory Marino, president of Kaplan University Group….
     …[The state’s community college] "underestimated the extent that Kaplan would use the MOU as a marketing tool, which they did very effectively," says Terri Carbaugh, the community college system's vice chancellor. "The public perception was that we're hand in glove with Kaplan."
     Campus officials say no articulation agreements have yet been reached, perhaps because some campus officers have been repulsed by Kaplan's crude overtures; one says Kaplan offered a free box of See's candy to the first 10 campus officials who agreed to talk about an articulation agreement.
. . .
     Some for-profit proprietors may have rushed into the college biz less out of a mission to prepare young people for gainful employment than in the quest for gainful investment. The sector's growth coincided with the relaxation of federal regulations governing the quality of their course offerings (drifting lower) and how far they could shove their snouts into the federal trough (ever deeper).
     In 1998, for instance, Congress raised the maximum portion of its revenue that any school could derive from federal student assistance to 90% from 85%. Those exceeding the limit lose their eligibility to receive the government aid.
     Kaplan University's ratio in 2009, according to the annual report of its parent, Washington Post Co. — yes, that Washington Post — was "less than" (in other words, "close to") 87.5%. The Kaplan subsidiary collected about $1.3 billion in federal student aid last year, which helped make it the largest and most profitable unit of the company.
     A congressional inquiry is underway into whether such institutions are gaming federal aid programs to their students' disadvantage — based on evidence that they "spend a large share of revenues on expenses unrelated to teaching, experience high dropout rates, and … employ abusive recruiting and debt-collection practices," in the words of a report by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). A Kaplan spokesman said in an e-mail that such critiques are "filled with inaccuracies and old stories."
     Kaplan is accused by former faculty members in a federal lawsuit in Florida of recruiting possibly unqualified students, pumping up their grades to keep them enrolled, and giving its own employees "scholarships" to keep the school's federal aid ratio below 90%. Kaplan calls the accusations "baseless" and "totally without merit."
     As for "online learning," there's certainly room for new techniques in education. But how much is too much? [State Academic Senate President Jane] Patton, who teaches public speaking, points to a Kaplan public speaking course in which students can deliver their speeches to a webcam….

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3 comments:

Dana Ryan said...

Wondering what you think of this refutation of the LA Times column on eLearning.com: http://bit.ly/am3cP2

Roy Bauer said...

8:50, the article you mention is a rebuttal, not a refutation. The author does little or nothing to respond to the many indications that for-profits such as Kaplan essentially exist to get federally insured loan money and use aggressive marketing to convince low-income students that they would be better off taking on such loans rather than waiting for CC courses that are a tenth the cost. Aside from issues of instructional quality, organizations such as Kaplan clearly generate many instances of the taking on of loans that cannot be paid back and that, therefore, the taxpayer must ultimately pay for. Again, what does the "eLearning" writer say about this? Nothing. In the long run, we (as a society) would be far better off spending the money to support sufficient CC instruction rather than underwriting yet another "bubble." Kaplan and its ilk prey on the unsuspecting for profit. --BvT

Anonymous said...

is that true?

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...