Maggie's Farm

RE: For Profit Education Report

MY DH says that if you back away from a problem you are not able to see where you are going. Rather you should focus on the ideal and drive forward to that goal.

Having said that let me point out a little piece of history that the liberals, nor the conservatives want to acknowledge. One of the most politically powerful and corrupt institutions is THE most liberal non-profit university. Back in the 1960's it was loosing enrollment and income. The solution was to open "store front" schools. Twenty seven of which were closed down due to fraud, academic corruption, and even in some states the legislature crafted laws against this type of learning. Yet, the conservatives never prosecuted !!

The idea of "distance education" was original to the true problem of distance. However, the fact that someone did not want to suffer the rigor of a traditional university (in the old university system) should never have been hidden behind the guise of distance education. I know faculty in non-profit universities who earned their "degree" at "distance learning" institutions and they lived only 3 miles away from a major university, into which they most likely would not have been accepted.

Distance became an excuse for fraud. The conservatives never challenged it and the major universities dropped their standards to compete with the "new thinking".

Until such time as both liberal and conservative sit down to create a plan to work toward an academic ideal, i.e. integrity, ethics, and rigor, there will be mass confusion in academia. Never forget that every truly talented and well educated HR person knows EXACTLY what is going on in the university departments pertinent to their industry! They may not be able to do anything with regard to the application of that knowledge, but the good ones do know where the best training, or education (two different things) is going on.

We MUST be able to acknowledge that the old classroom rigor offered an education experience to the student that no one is getting now. We must have the courage to require that online learning degrees state clearly on the front "online", or that distance learning degrees state clearly "distance learning program". If we do not even have the courage to make this simple demand on the system there is no point in having this conversation around "for profit education" vs. "not for profit education".

While I agree that the specific problems this researcher examined do exist, I do not see that he has made the case for "for profit" universities. He has simply stated that they are able to create new training programs according to this year's need of industry, or the fashion of the season. He has not addressed the issues of truly educating a citizen; someone capable of critical thinking, reasoned debate, or mathematical and scientific skills. The scope of his research is narrow and should not be applied to the problem of the whole system. Until we have the courage to enforce ethics, rigor, integrity, and transparency--nobody is getting the education we should not be surprised to see evil prevail in academia.