The business media recognize that Betsy DeVos is changing federal policy to make room for for-profit education, both for K-12 charters and for higher education. She is rolling back regulations intended to curb the excesses of predatory for-profit “colleges,” known for preying on and exploiting veterans, the poor, and unwary students.
So here is a business analysis of the stocks that are soaring with the expectation that the DeVos is great news for educationally unsound for-profit colleges.
The basic story is that DeVos’ Department of Education has made clear that it sides with the predators, not the prey. Students will continue to be cheated. DeVos doesn’t care.
For-profit charters and for-profit virtual charters and for-profit higher education strike me as morally reprehensible. They may make money for investors, but they are educationally bankrupt.
By it’s nature, the for-profit corporation owes its first duty to investors, not students. It must turn a profit or go belly-up. Thus, it must cut costs, and the easiest way to do this is to cut the cost of teachers by hiring inexperienced teachers and giving them large classes. They are also incentivized to seek the easiest to educate students and avoid expensive ones who need extra attention.
Many of the for-profit charters are trying to cut costs by putting kids on computers. They call it “blended learning” or use the oxymoron “personalized learning.” But it is cheap education no matter what you call it.
Diane, this is a must read article on who is behind the war on public education and why.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/04/corporate-plan-groom-u-s-kids-servitude-wiping-public-schools.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
Steve Ruis
Here’s an issue worth paying attention to: the Prosper Act.
For DeVos and Trump predator is an apt word to describe them. Trump has also been bashing the work of community colleges. He would like to replace them with vocational schools despite the fact that most community college offer many vocational options for students. Trump’s comments simply point out his lack of knowledge about what community colleges do. It may be he and DeVos would like to push these students out of government funded education and into the for profit market. https://www.heraldandnews.com/members/forum/wire_commentary/why-does-trump-keep-dumping-on-the-work-of-community/article_db0a62df-c819-5c10-b8a7-66f81a8b06b1.html
If the US Department of Education is promoting for-profit colleges, should 18 year olds rely on the US Department of Education for solid, accurate advice on student loans?
Should the less financially savvy students have to hire a private adviser without a conflict of interest? What about first generation college students? Don’t they need someone in government who isn’t captured before they accept what could be bad information?
These are HUGE financial decisions they’re making- they will literally affect their entire financial future. Can they trust ANYONE to give them good information, or are they just thrown to the wolves at 17 and 18 years old?
DeVos is promoting these for-profits. My advice to any 18 year olds out there is to find a more reliable adviser than the US Department of Education.
It’s really shameful that these mid and late-career profiteers are loading 18 year olds up with debt to pad their own bank accounts. What a betrayal.
These vultures know that poor students do not have access to information. These for profit schools prey on these young people’s naivete and put them into debt. Lots of them cannot get a job that pays enough to pay down their debt. They live a life of eternal servitude with garnished wages. This is the new economy in which the rich feed on the poor, a second cousin to privatized prisons and charter schools. This practice is no better than payday loans. It is a form of legal usury. It is legal because it benefits the already wealthy. Shameful exploitation of the poor!
One place young people can go for unbiased and unbought info on for-profits is, amazingly, Reddit.
Before you borrow read the Reddit stories of for-profit colleges. There are THOUSANDS of stories.
It’s a shame they can’t rely on the people they’re paying in government to give them good information, but since they can’t, they better start looking elsewhere.
Ask other students. Ignore the middle aged “advisers” like DeVos who went to pricey private colleges 30 years ago. They have no understanding of your situation at all.
Find good advice. Don’t borrow a cent until you find a reliable trustworthy adult who isn’t ripping you off.
How much do you think these adults make every year, ripping off first generation college students?
“The Podesta lobbyists join a CECU lobby team that already includes Kimberly Dorgan of Signal Group Consulting Group (who got $50,000 from CECU in the first three months of 2017) and former congressman Henry Bonilla (R-TX) ($30,000). Inside CECU, Gunderson has Michael Dakduk, Executive Vice President and Director of Government Relations, who leveraged his stint as head of Student Veterans of America, tilting that group to favor for-profits, to get the CECU job. (SVA now has strong, principled leadership and fights to protect veterans from predatory schools.)”
I bet we’;re looking at million dollar salaries. Aren’t they ashamed? Saddling naive 17 and 18 year olds will tens of thousands in debt before their 21st birthday?
Say “no”, young people. Don’t sign ANYTHING until you find one adult somewhere who works for YOU.
I got a 2 year degree at a public community college free and then 2 more years at another public college for 1500 (total) in loans.
Obviously I had a HUGE starting advantage over young people today, who START with tens of thousands in debt thanks to the middle aged folks who decided they did not feel like passing down the advantages they got.
I feel bad for them. People in my generation had it easier.
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Oklahoma teachers who walked out of their classrooms to protest school funding cuts should “keep adult disagreements and disputes in a separate place.”
I’m amused that education reformers are now concerned about public school students in Oklahoma.
Not a peep out of these “advocates” when 1/3 of Oklahoma districts were closing one day a week due to lack of funding.
They probably didn’t know. Public schools are an absolute last priority in ed reform.
It’s news to the ed reform echo chamber that 30 states have been gutting public school funding for the last 8 years. They didn’t know. I bet DeVos could recite which states have expanded vouchers the last 8 years! But kids in the unfashionable public schools? No one in DC cares.
“Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Oklahoma teachers who walked out of their classrooms to protest school funding cuts should “keep adult disagreements and disputes in a separate place.”
I love this quote! Don’t students (and their parents) have a right to know why their school only runs four days a week? Shouldn’t they understand why their teacher is standing on a street corner begging for money to buy supplies for her classroom? Don’t you think they should know why their classroom doesn’t have enough desks, textbooks,…?
Keep up your commentary, Chiara.
Since ed reformers are (now) interested in public school students in Oklahoma, they’re be able to show us examples of their passionate advocacy for those same students the last 8 years, right?
When their schools were being gutted?
If you call yourself a “public education advocate” you should have been aware that whole state systems were collapsing, correct? It shouldn’t be a surprise that Oklahoma and West Virginia and Arizona public schools were collapsing for lack of funding?
This story disgusted me. Just one more tale of bleeding public schools for profit and duping those who seek an affordable higher education.
This is off topic but shows how bad this economy is going to be thanks to the GOP and Trump. No wonder they are saying that we need to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The GOP worked furiously to be sure this ‘wonderful Christmas present to the middle class’ passed before the CBO could give out information. How long will this country survive under such conditions?
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Federal Budget Deficit Projected to Top $1 Trillion in 2020
The new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office takes into account the cost of the sweeping tax cuts that Republicans in Congress passed last year.
The national debt, which has topped $21 trillion, is expected to soar to more than $33 trillion in 2028.
By then, debt held by the public will almost match the size of the nation’s economy, reaching 96 percent of gross domestic product, a higher level than any point since just after World War II and well past the level that economists say could court a crisis..