You have /5 articles left.
Sign up for a free account or log in.
Several higher education policy experts with differing views on the value of for-profit institutions came together to develop a set of policy recommendations for holding for-profit institutions accountable in a recent report from Opportunity America.
“Like too many issues in education, the question of how to regulate for-profit colleges and universities has become deeply politicized,” the report begins. “Legitimate questions about how to encourage market-driven investment in career-oriented education while protecting students from exploitation have been drowned out by partisan posturing and unproductive fights over ideology and motives.”
The goal of the working group was to develop a practical approach for regulating proprietary institutions. They proposed six policies, several of which would apply to all postsecondary institutions, including:
- Program-level disclosure requirements—debt-to-earnings ratios, completion and repayment rates—for all institutions
- Minimum debt-to-earnings and completion standards for all programs at all institutions
- For for-profit institutions, a series of escalating sanctions for poor debt-to-earnings outcomes as determined by comparing colleges to other colleges with comparable shares of Pell-eligible students
- For for-profit institutions, a series of escalating sanctions for poor completion rates, also determined by comparing institutions
- Increased scrutiny and potential consequences for unusually rapid growth and decline for all institutions
- Potentially measuring cohort default rates at the program level.
