This is a story I published last June.
It is more timely than ever now that Trump and Devos, both of who love the for-profit sector, have taken charge of the federal role in education.
For shame!
Archives for category: Higher Education
During the Obama years, it appeared that the federal government was going to start cracking down on the for-profit “higher education” industry, which typically gets horrible results and loads students with debt. (As I have reported in the past, former officials of the Obama Department of Education bought control of one of the nation’s largest for-profit college chains.)
But with the election victory of Donald Trump, sponsor of the fraudulent Trump University, the stock prices of for-profit education corporations went through the roof. Why would anyone expect a man who profited as founder of Trump University to crack down on others doing the same?
The New York Times reports:
Since Election Day, for-profit college companies have been on a hot streak. DeVry Education Group’s stock has leapt more than 40 percent. Strayer’s jumped 35 percent and Grand Canyon Education’s more than 28 percent.
You do not need an M.B.A. to figure out why. Top officials in Washington who spearheaded a relentless crackdown on the multibillion-dollar industry have been replaced by others who have profited from it.
President Trump ran the now-defunct Trump University, which wound up besieged by lawsuits from former students and New York’s attorney general, who called the operation a fraud. Within days of the election, Mr. Trump, without admitting any wrongdoing, agreed to a $25 million settlement.
Betsy DeVos, the newly installed secretary of education, is an ardent campaigner for privately run schools and has investments in for-profit educational ventures.
Please notice the use of the present tense “has.” Betsy DeVos did not divest her holdings in for-profit entities that are in direct conflict with her duties as Secretary of Education. Apparently in the Trump regime, ethics laws have been suspended for everyone, at least at the cabinet level.
While Ms. DeVos’s nomination attracted a flood of attention, most was focused on the K-through-12 system and the use of taxpayer-funded vouchers for private, online and religious schools. Higher education was barely mentioned during her confirmation hearings.
Yet colleges and universities are the institutions most directly influenced by the federal government, while public schools remain largely in the hands of states and localities. So it is in higher education that the new administration’s power is likely to be felt most keenly and quickly.
Under the Obama administration, the Education Department discouraged students from attending for-profit colleges, arguing recently that the data showed “community colleges offer a better deal than comparable programs at for-profit colleges with higher price tags.”
The for-profit sector has about 8 percent of those enrolled in higher education, according to the Education Department, but it has 15 percent of subsidized student loans.
While some career training schools delivered as promised, critics argued that too many burdened veterans, minorities and low-income strivers with unmanageable tuition debt without equipping them with jobs and skills that would enable them to pay it off.
After years of growing complaints and lawsuits, the agency moved aggressively to end abusive practices that ranged from deceptive advertising to fraud and cost students and taxpayers billions of dollars.
Two mammoth chains collapsed — Corinthian Colleges in 2015, and ITT Technical Institute in 2016 — leaving thousands of students stranded without degrees and in debt. Overall enrollment in for-profit institutions declined from 2.4 million in 2010 to 1.6 million in 2015 as hundreds of campuses closed. And as the largest provider of student loans, the federal government was left to bail out the defrauded.
Please open the article and check out the links.
Jerry Falwell Jr. says that Trump has asked him to lead a federal task force on higher education policy.
Falwell says he can be very helpful to Betsy DeVos (if she is confirmed). DeVos showed at her hearing that she knows nothing about higher education.
We know about the grizzly bears and Billionaire Betsy’s ignorance about special education, but we have not seen her respond to questions about higher education.
This clip of Elizabeth Warren grilling her on higher education is priceless.
It is almost cruel to ask substantive questions of DeVos. She doesn’t know and doesn’t care. She promises to discuss it and get back to you later, after she is confirmed.
Please watch:
Katherine Crawford-Garrett and Rebecca Sánchez are professors in the school of education at the University of New Mexico. They wrote the following commentary:
Like so many universities across the country, the University of New Mexico, a minority-serving institution, has experienced a sharp increase in hate-related incidents since the presidential election last week. These events, which have included swastikas being spray painted around campus and the attempt to remove a Muslim woman’s hijab in the library, have triggered responses from departments, colleges, and senior level university officials such as the President and Provost.
The chair of the American studies department, for example, immediately sent a note to students inviting them to an informal gathering to process emotions and share thoughts and insights; a colleague who teaches Spanish reported that faculty and administrators in her department were collectively planning a teach-in. A professor in Chicano studies initiated a petition to have the campus designated as a sanctuary for undocumented students. The Provost shared insights about the role of the university in comforting those who “are hurt, scared, and disenfranchised.” As professors in the College of Education, we wondered how our college might respond, aware that our students were not only navigating a treacherous environment on campus but simultaneously working as pre-service teachers in public schools where they were struggling to debrief the election, address issues of bullying and aggression, and ease the anxieties and fears expressed by their students from immigrant backgrounds.
As the days passed, we became increasingly confounded by the silence from our college and department and tried sending emails inquiring whether a message would be sent to education students and faculty within our community. Specifically we asserted that, “As the College of Education at a Minority-Serving Institution, we have a moral obligation to acknowledge the events of the past several days, re-affirm our commitments to diversity, and offer our students an opportunity to discuss and process what has happened.” We understand that addressing these issues is difficult and that members of our college community hold diverse political views and experienced the aftermath of the election from a variety of different positions and perspectives. Yet we argue that we have an ethical responsibility to foster dialogue, generate discussion and encourage solidarity. As a result of these convictions, we also attempted to start a conversation among our colleagues directly by sending an email to our faculty listserv. In our message, we posed critical questions about the purposes of teacher education, including the following:
- What does it mean to be critical participants in a democracy?
- In what ways do we rigorously and consistently engage diversity in our courses, programs and department?
- What does it mean to prepare teachers to teach in “these times?”
- How do we center human relationships in our work? Both with each other and with our students?
- How do we stay connected to our vision and values as we negotiate pressures from state and federal sources?
While many of our colleagues expressed interest in discussing these questions, we later discovered that certain responses to our email were not distributed by department leaders, including one particularly powerful response authored by a Black, female professor. Lastly, we sought to reach out to the elementary education students enrolled in our program by compiling a comprehensive list of resources to support them as they attempted to confront the numerous issues surfacing in their classrooms in the wake of the election. These resources included links to news accounts of school and university-based violence occurring across the country, guidelines for discussing the election from organizations like Teaching Tolerance and Facing History and Ourselves, a list of our College’s core values which include tenets like social justice, diversity and advocacy, excerpts from U.S. court cases that affirm children’s rights to an equal education, and suggestions on how to move forward collectively in an era marked by deeply divisive rhetoric. Unfortunately, we were denied access to the elementary education listserv (though we are both faculty members in the program) and told the resources we sought to provide did not constitute official business.
While we both found creative ways around these obstacles by contacting our individual students directly (a fraction of those we could have reached through the listserv) and working to organize a community forum, which will be held on Inauguration Day, we remain alarmed by the silence and resistance we encountered in our college. What is most damning about this silence is that it subverts the very core of our work as teacher educators. What could be more essential to our profession than helping pre-service teachers conduct meaningful, urgent discussions with students about what it means to live and participate in a democracy?
When we finally saw our students in class nearly a week after the election, they had stories to share regarding personal experiences on campus and the conditions they encountered in their elementary and high school classrooms. One high school teacher was told by her principal that discussing the election with students was unprofessional and would be marked as such on a forthcoming evaluation. An elementary school teacher shared a note written by student who said he wouldn’t be participating in class that day because he was so worried about his family’s impending deportation. Another teacher shared that a group of 5th graders were bullying younger students at the school with the justification that “If the president can talk like this, so can we.” A Middle-Eastern graduate student conveyed fears that if he chose to leave the U.S. to visit his family over the summer, he may not be allowed back in to complete his degree. These concerns serve as tangible and concrete reminders of the necessity of creating the space to have difficult conversations in our classrooms.
We still don’t fully understand the silence we encountered within our college and cannot definitively identify its roots, but we believe it may be related to fear — the same fear pre-service teachers often express about raising controversial topics in the classroom, confronting homophobia directly, or discussing race with their students — fears that we connect, at least tangentially, to school reform initiatives that extol compliance over criticality and creativity. Our teacher education program, like those across the country, faces pressure to comply with a host of increasingly meaningless standards and mandates while the potential for real, transformative work is essentially lost. As a teacher education department, we seem to dedicate a tremendous amount of time to discussing assessment, analyzing standards and designing performance indicators but precious little time to the hard work of interrupting hate in K-12 classrooms, on college campuses, and in the world at large. Even when many of us attempt to do this work individually in our own courses and through our research endeavors, how much more powerful and potentially transformative would this work be if it were given the institutional attention that standards and evaluation so often receive?
Our nation is clearly at a crossroads and education will undoubtedly play an essential role in how we collectively move forward. If our goal as educators is to develop critically-conscious citizens capable of engaging productively within our democracy, we must live these values as well. We must talk fearlessly with one another, engage in dialogue even when it feels uncertain and uncomfortable, and be willing to affirm one another’s humanity. As Holocaust survivor and scholar Elie Wiesel noted, “To remain silent and indifferent is the greatest sin of all.”
You may have heard about a shiny new service that promises to reward high school students with money that can be applied to future college tuition if they reach certain targets. It is called Raise.me.
I confess I had not heard about it until our dear friend Laura Chapman wrote one of her deeply researched comments about it. She googled and came across a scathing article by Steve Nelson, the headmaster of the Calhoun School in New York City. I browsed the website of Raise.me and read the glowing articles written about it in the press.
You should learn about it too. It seems to be yet another way to gather personally identifiable information about students. It is part of the insidious data mining regime that certain philanthropies, corporations, and the federal government have been crafting to create both Big Data and cradle-to-grave data about individuals, usually without their knowledge.
First, Steve Nelson. He reminds us of the old adage that if something is too good to be true, it probably isn’t. He writes:
“In a matter of days I’ve gone from knowing nothing about Raise.me to being inundated with information. Raise.me is an organization that purports to provide wonderful scholarship opportunities to high school students, particularly those who are less privileged and less likely to have sophisticated guidance in choosing a college and financing their education.
“First awareness came via an uncritical New York Times piece describing Raise.me. After visiting their website I’ve received emails hoping my school might guide students to the program. Apparently many colleges and universities have signed on. If nothing else, this venture has good PR and marketing capabilities. I use the word “venture” intentionally, as will shortly be clear.
“Interested readers can visit the site to find details on the mechanics of the programs, but here is a short overview: Beginning in 9th grade, students register for the program and earn “dollars” for various things, including grades, grade point averages, AP courses, extra-curricular activities and others. Individual colleges assign their own values, so college X may offer $300 for an “A” and university Y offers only $100. The students then accumulate “dollars” that will be granted in scholarships by the college when and if the college admits the student.
“Too good to be true? Probably. Misleading? Perhaps.
“First, I must register an objection to monetizing student choices. Extrinsic motivators are fleeting and often counterproductive. There are already enough incentives that drive America’s students to see learning as an exercise in credential accumulation rather than seeking enlightenment, joy, creation or curiosity. This program is a more sophisticated version of the programs instituted in some urban schools, where small children are treated like laboratory animals, earning small rewards for compliant behavior or good grades.
“Raise.me takes the already stressful process of college application and presses it needlessly into years when students should be exploring, taking risks, having fun and not be encumbered by the pressure of getting in to college. (This is also the case with the new college application process, Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, supported by all the Ivy League schools and 80 or so other highly selective colleges. Like Raise.me, the Coalition intrudes needlessly on adolescence by pressing kids into the college game earlier and earlier.)”
Nelson did some research and discovered that the enterprise was funded by venture capital. What’s in it for the investors? He is not sure.
“Of greater concern is that there is no evidence the accumulated “dollars” actually add to what a student might have received in a total aid package from any university. In business terms, dollars are fungible, and any credit given for Raise.me earnings can be (and seems to be) deducted from other sources the college might have applied. A few reports on College Confidential indicate that my skepticism is warranted. In other words, the program drives students to a college, but probably has no impact on the financial aid package that would otherwise have been awarded. And of course that’s almost certainly true! No college would allow its discretionary aid awards to be dictated by a program like Raise.me.”
Our esteemed friend Laura Chapman came across Raise.me, and this is what she reported after she perused the website of Raise.me:
Welcome to Raise.me, an online service owned and operated by Raise Labs Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Raise.me,” “we,” and/or “us”). Please read on to learn the rules and restrictions that govern your use of our websites, products, services, and applications (the “Services”). ….
These Terms of Use (the “Terms”) are a binding contract between you and Raise.me. You must agree to and accept all of the Terms, or you don’t have the right to use the Services. By using the Services in any way (whether as a visitor or a registered member), it means that you agree to all of these Terms, and these Terms will remain in effect while you use the Services. These Terms include the provisions in this document, as well as those in the Privacy Policy and Copyright Dispute Policy
Over 320,000 students – representing 1 out of 2 high schools in America – have signed up to earn ‘micro-scholarships’ from a diverse set of over 180 colleges and universities
Here is an example of the high schools and one university using the Raise Me platform https://twin-cities.umn.edu/news-events/university-minnesota-announces-scholarship-program-raiseme
Here is part of the privacy policy at Raise Me. We receive and store any information you knowingly provide to us. For example, through the registration process and/or through your account settings, we may collect Personal Information (such as your name, email address, phone number), account information (such as a password or other information that helps us confirm that it is you accessing your account), demographic or other information (such as your school, gender, age or birthday, and other information about your interests and preferences), and third-party account credentials (for example, your log-in credentials for Google Plus or other third party sites). Any other information combined with your Personal Information will be treated together as Personal Information. You may have the opportunity to create a profile, which may include Personal Information, photographs, information about your academic and work history, your interests and activities, your use of Raise.me’s Services and other information.
When you earn a Micro-Scholarship, you may be required to provide additional information, such as proof of identity (which may include a driver’s license, passport, voting card or similar government issued identification), proof of academic and work history (which may include high school transcripts, standardized test scores, or references from teachers or counselors), or proof of financial need (which may include completing a FAFSA or CSS profile, and providing other family income documentation), in order to claim the award. Colleges which have awarded you Micro-Scholarships may share your application, enrollment and graduation information with us. If you provide your third-party account credentials to us or otherwise sign in to Raise.me’s Services through a third party site or service, you understand some content and/or information in those accounts (“Third Party Account Information”) may be transmitted into your account with us, and that Third Party Account Information transmitted to our Services is covered by this Privacy Policy; for example, if you log into our Services through Google Plus, your Google Plus profile information will be populated into your profile on Raise.me’s Services.
All information entered by you is voluntary and at your own discretion, though certain information may be required in order to register with us or to take advantage of some of our features. If you provide such information, you consent to the use of that information in accordance with the policies and practices described in this Privacy Policy. Raise.me may, on occasion, send you notifications, information, materials, or other offers through e-mail, text, or other type of notification. Also, we may receive a confirmation when you open an email from us. This confirmation helps us make our communications with you more interesting and improve our Services. If you do not want to receive communications from us, please indicate your preference in the “Account Settings” page of the website. https://www.raise.me/privacy_policy
Information Collected Automatically: This is too long for the post. See also the Terms of Use policy.
Suggest you also look up Raise Labs Inc. Delaware.
Mercedes Schneider writes here about Bobby Jindal’s reckless stewardship of higher education in Louisiana. In addition to cutting funding and shifting the costs to students and families, he made promises that the state could not afford to keep. Jindal left behind a mountain of deficits and broken promises. Yet now he is under consideration for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services. In a future post, if Jindal continues to be a contender, Mercedes should detail Jindal’s inhumane budget cuts to hospitals and health clinics for the poor.
She helpfully reminds the Trump transition team of the insults that Jindal heaped on Trump at a press conference where he described Trump, as reported in The National Review:
“Narcissist,” “egomaniac,” “absurd,” “a carnival act,” “insecure,” “weak,” “dangerous,” “unstable,” “unserious,” “shallow,” “hothead,” “small,” “substance-free,” “power-hungry shark,” “egomaniacal madman”: Those were just a few of the names Jindal called Trump in his 10 minute speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. today.
I want to say what everyone is thinking about Donald Trump but afraid to say,” Jindal said. “Everybody knows this is true.”
In one of the most ethically-challenged actions of former Education Department officials, a group made a bid for the for-profit University of Phoenix, whose fortunes were waning due to regulations and oversight by the prospective new purchasers. The Wall Street Journal cried foul when the deal went public months ago, saying that the same government officials who drove down the UP stock price were taking advantage of the low price for their own gain.
Politico reports that enrollment at UP continues to fall, but the deal is moving ahead:
“WITH SALE ON THE LINE, UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX ENROLLMENT DOWN AGAIN: The parent company of the University of Phoenix reported another sharp drop in enrollment Thursday, while a proposed sale of the for-profit college giant continues to hang in the balance. Apollo Education Group told investors that enrollment at the University of Phoenix was 142,500 as of Aug. 31 – a more than 25 percent decline from a year earlier. New enrollments also fell by nearly 27 percent, to 19,400. A group of private investors with ties to the Obama administration are seeking to buy Apollo. The company had previously warned that if the sale wasn’t completed by early October, its worsening financial condition might sink the deal. But Thursday Apollo Education told investors that it currently meets the minimum financial standards required for the deal to close – and expects to continue meeting those standards going forward. Michael Stratford has more.”
To read the links, read here: http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-education/2016/10/obama-administration-pushes-new-block-grant-216991
Graduation rates at for-profit institutions are abysmal.
They have been called predators in Cipongressional hearings. They prey on the unwary.
Just in. A protest against a “Chancellor” who refuses to negotiate, who served as Jeb Bush’s lieutenant governor, who has no academic qualifications, and who was brought in to defund the state university system.
Dear Comrades,
I am emailing you all because as of 5 am this morning, the faculty of the entire Pennsylvania State University System went on strike. Our faculty union, APSCUF, represents more than 7,000 faculty at all 14 state universities, and this strike will affect more than 100,000 students. Picket lines begin at 7 am this morning, and we seek your support.
APSCUF faculty have been working without a contract for more than a year (477 days). APSCUF has been trying very hard to negotiate a fair contract, but the PASSHE System, led by Chancellor Frank Brogan, have repeatedly turned away from negotiations, and then, after nearly a year, they proposed 249 contractual changes, many of which undermine academic quality. The State System wants to cut the pay of our lowest paid professors; increase their powers to retrench any faculty member of any rank; and it has demanded tens of millions of dollars in givebacks from the faculty, especially in terms of health care coverage and costs, and reductions in professional development and sabbaticals.
The situation is complex, as would any contract affecting so many people. But there is a simple and familiar side to this story. Frank Brogan was appointed by our previous Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, a Republican who sought to defund and privatize public higher education as much as possible. Prior to his appointment as Chancellor, Brogan (who has never taught in higher education) served as Lieutenant Governor for Jeb Bush in Florida.
Our current Governor Tom Wolfe supports the faculty, and he has requested that the State System continue to negotiate, but the Chancellor has defied these requests.
Please visit the APSCUF web site where many more details are available, and you can sign a petition to tell the State System to settle a fair contract: http://www.apscuf.org. We also request that you email our Chancellor Frank Brogan at chancellor@passhe.edu to tell the State System to negotiate a fair contract and to care about the quality of education.
Thank your for your support.
Since I am unable to use my IUP email address by which I am registered on this list, I am grateful that my friend, Jeff Williams, is distributing this message. I can be reached on my gmail account.
In solidarity,
David Downing
English Department
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
dbdowning88@gmail.com
On September 30, Wellesley College inaugurated its 14th president since the college was founded in 1875. The new president is Dr. Paula Johnson, a cardiologist with an MD and a Ph.D. in public health. She is a renowned scientist, researcher, physician, teacher, and expert on the subject of women’s health. I met Dr. Johnson when I went to Wellesley for Pasi Sahlberg’s performance/lecture. She is brilliant, unassuming, warm, and very impressive.
I was class of 1960 at Wellesley. Hillary was class of 1969. Obviously, we did not overlap.
But this is what you need to know about Wellesley. Its motto is “Non ministrari, sed ministrate,” which means “not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” Not to be served, but to serve.
Another motto is “Incipit vita nova: here begins new life.”
That’s what Wellesley was for me, coming from the public schools of Houston, from parents who never went to college, from a decidedly non-academic, non-bookish family. The beginning of a new life.
I think that’s what Wellesley meant for Hillary Rodham, coming from public schools in Illinois, from a family of modest means. The beginning of a new life.
Wellesley is where we began a new life. It is the educational environment that shaped us.
To understand that environment, I invite you to watch some or all of the inauguration of Dr. Paula A.Johnson. The video has a table of contents, and you can skip the 30-minute processional and go right to the speakers. Watch the brief speech of Senator Elizabeth Warren. Then watch Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard University, who delivers a fascinating overview of women’s higher education and the snobbishness it encountered. Then watch Kathleen McCartney, president of Smith College, who speaks with great wit about the sibling rivalry between Smith and Wellesley but assures Dr. Johnson that all her sisters are with her. Listen to Dr. Virginia W. Pinn, a senior scientist at the National Institutes of Health and a medical pioneer, who knows Dr. Johnson’s role in her field.
And of course, please watch and listen to Dr. Johnson, who is simply fabulous. Dr. Johnson grew up in Brooklyn. She is a product of the New York City public schools, having completed her high school studies at Samuel J. Tilden High School, a comprehensive school where she met teachers who inspired and encouraged her. From Tilden, she went to Radcliffe and Harvard, where she began her brilliant career. [Tilden was declared a “failing school” by the Bloomberg administration in 2006 and converted to small schools.]
To understand the environment that shaped Hillary Rodham and me, watch this video. It made us strong, fearless, and prepared us to face the future armed with a strong liberal arts education and the belief that women can do anything. It taught us that we were fortunate to have such a wonderful education and were obliged to use it to make a difference for others.
Diane Ravitch's blog 