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.
