The Virginia Foxx Bill: “Protecting The Freedom Of For-Profit Schools To Suck Off The Government Teat Without Any Accountability Whatsoever Act”
Earlier this year, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass a bill with the impressive, everybody-can-get-behind-this title “Protecting Academic Freedom in Higher Education Act.” Sponsored by the ultra-conservative North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, the bill ostensibly took aim at an issue close to small-government-loving hearts: intrusive federal regulation of for-profit colleges — fast growing, highly profitable outfits like DeVry University or the online-only University of Phoenix.
Like so many of the bills passed by the House since Republicans gained the majority in the 2010 midterm elections, the bill was designed to repeal specific actions taken by the Obama administration. In this case, the issue at hand was the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure greater “program integrity” in the for-profit educational sector. Specifically, a new federal definition of what constitutes a legitimate academic “credit hour” and a new requirement that all online providers of post-secondary education be accredited in each and every state in which they do business.
Foxx’s bill repealed both measures. (The Senate has yet to address the measure.) According to Foxx, the new federal regulations threatened “innovation” in the educational sector. As reported by InsideHigherEducation, Foxx is on record as declaring that for-profit colleges do a “a better job of being mindful about efficiency and effectiveness than their nonprofit peers.” By, for example, flexibly providing online education when and where low-income working Americans want it, the for-profit free market delivers the kind of quality higher education that Americans so desperately need. The government should just stay out of their business.
I stumbled upon this story while researching the student loan crisis and at first I was perplexed. I didn’t understand why Republicans were opposed to higher academic standards for the for-profit sector, and I didn’t get the connection to student loans. But it didn’t take much research to discover what was really going on: an example of blatant hypocrisy sufficient to outrage even the most jaded observer of American politics.
The for-profit educational sector is an industry almost entirely subsidized by the federal government. Around 70-80 percent of for-profit revenues are generated by federal student loans. At the same time, judging by sky-high dropout rates, the for-profit schools do a terrible job of educating students. The Obama administration’s efforts to define a credit hour and require state accreditation were motivated by a very understandable desire: to ensure that taxpayers are getting their money’s worth when federal cash pays for a student’s education. In contrast, Foxx’s legislation is designed to remove that taxpayer protection. So here’s a more accurate title for her bill: “The Protecting the Freedom of For-Profit Schools to Suck off the Government Teat Without Any Accountability Whatsoever Act.”
The for-profit educational sector has been growing extraordinarily rapidly for the past decade: 12 percent of all post-secondary students are now enrolled in for-profit schools, up from 3 percent 10 years ago. But the main beneficiaries of the growth appear to be the shareholders and executives of the largest publicly traded for-profit schools, not the students.
- In 2008, for-profit schools registered a a graduation rate of 22 percent. (Public and private non-profits registered 55 percent and 65 percent respectively.)
- 54 percent of the students who enrolled in 2008-2009 in 14 publicly traded for-profit schools had withdrawn without a degree by 2010.
- The biggest player in the for-profit sector, the University of Phoenix, graduated only 9 percent of its B.A. candidates within six years.
The pathetic performance of the for-profit sector in delivering actual degrees becomes all the more alarming when you realize that most of the students who are dropping out paid for their educations with student loans that have to be paid back: According to a report released in the summer of 2010 by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, “Emerging Risk?: An Overview of Growth, Spending, Student Debt and Unanswered Questions in For-Profit Higher Education,” in 2009, the five largest for-profit schools reported that government grants and loans accounted for 77.4 percent of their revenue.
The Harkin reports comes to a stark conclusion:
The Federal government and taxpayers are making a large and rapidly growing investment in financial aid to for-profit schools, with few tools in place to gauge how well that money is being spent. Available data show that very few students enroll in for-profit schools without taking on debt, while a staggering number of students are leaving the schools, presumably many without completing a degree or certificate.
It is precisely this situation that the Obama administration’s efforts to ensure “program integrity” were designed to address. Student loans are tied to credit hours: By requiring a more rigorous definition of credit hour, the administration was attempting to make sure that government money was paying for actual education. Similarly, the requirement that all for-profit schools must be accredited by the individual states in which they do business was a measure designed to keep fly-by-night online schools operating out of states with weak accreditation requirements from enrolling out-of-state students and ripping them off. The issue is not “innovation.” The issue is basic consumer protection.
One would imagine that Republicans, who theoretically oppose government involvement in the private sector, and are always looking for ways to cut government spending, would approve of efforts to seek greater accountability for taxpayer funds. Virginia Foxx, after all, was notorious for being one of only 11 members of Congress to vote against a federal relief package for victims of Hurricane Katrina, citing the “high potential for the waste, fraud and abuse of federal tax dollars.”
But as it turns out, Foxx herself is benefiting from the waste and abuse of federal tax dollars. Among the top 20 financial contributors to Foxx in the 2011-2012 cycle are the Association of Private Sector Colleges/Universities, the Apollo Group (owner of the University of Phoenix), and Corinthian Colleges. Since federal student loans comprise the vast majority of the revenues of those for-profit schools, it follows that their campaign contributions to Foxx are also made possible by U.S. taxpayers.
By: Andrew Leonard, Salon, April 16, 2012
“MBA And Law Degree”: Rick Santorum Is A “Snob” By His Own Definition
So Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama, and a whole bunch of other people in politics want to be president.
What a bunch of snobs.
That is, of course, if we use Santorum’s definition, which seems oddly to equate the quest for success with snobbery. Santorum called Obama a “snob” for encouraging young people to go to college, which is pretty much the opposite of what most parents say to their kids. It’s especially odd when we consider that Santorum has his MBA and law degree, and is encouraging his own children to go to college. And as for Santorum’s claim that all Obama wants is for young people to be recreated in his image by liberal college professors ready to indoctrinate them, is that how Santorum explains Harvard Law and Business grad Romney? With an estimated wealth of $250 million and a wife who, the candidate disclosed recently drives “a couple of Cadillacs,” Romney’s not exactly from the ‘hood.
Snobbery isn’t defined by inclusion. It’s defined by willful exclusion. Wanting more people to attend college isn’t snobbery; it’s advocating a route that statistically puts the individual in a place of higher wealth and lower unemployment. Refusing to talk to someone at the PTA meeting who didn’t go to college is snobbery. Refusing to associate with people simply because they don’t have money or fancy cars is snobbery. It may be more than that, of course. It may just be that people tend to hang around people from similar backgrounds. But encouraging someone to seek higher education isn’t snobbery at all. It’s the opposite.
Santorum is correct if he was saying that four-year colleges aren’t for everyone. Not everyone has the interest or the intellect to attend such institutions, and the world indeed needs laborers, artists, performers, and technicians who can do their work well with other kinds of training. Community colleges in particular provide critical education for people not suited to four-year school, and they have the added advantage of training people for jobs that for the most part can’t be outsourced. As Rep. Barney Frank once astutely observed, “You can’t stick a needle in somebody’s ass from Mumbai.”
But what’s really happening on the campaign trail is the tired and unbelievably hypocritical effort to seek the snobbiest job in America by demonizing parts of the electorate as “snobs.” And where does the concern for the non-snobby among us go after the campaign? Candidates may tout the value of “Joe The Plumber,” but they let guys like “Sheldon The Las Vegas Casino Billionaire” bankroll their campaign through unlimited super PAC donations. All the candidates have at least one million-dollar donor helping out. Santorum, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, just got $1 million from Louisiana businessman William Dore; Foster Friess has also been dumping cash into the Red, White and Blue Fund for the former Pennsylvania senator. If Santorum wins the White House, who will guide his decisions—Joe the Unsnobby, or the billionaires who paid for his campaign?
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, February 28, 2012
Studies Refute Santorum’s Claim That College Makes People Less Religious
Rick Santorum has lamented in recent public appearances that Americans are losing their religion by going to college. Asked to defend his charge that President Obama is a “snob” for wanting all Americans to engage in higher education, Santorum repeated the claim Sunday on ABC’s This Week, declaring that “62 percent of kids who enter college with some sort of faith commitment leave without it.” He’s invoked the same figure before.
A slight problem: multiple studies have found that the opposite is true — including the one that Santorum has reportedly been referring to.
A study published 2007 in the journal Social Forces — which PBS reports that Santorum’s claim is based on, although his spokesman didn’t respond to TPM’s request for confirmation — finds that Americans who don’t go to college experience a steeper decline in their religiosity than those who do.
“Contrary to our own and others’ expectations, however, young adults who never enrolled in college are presently the least religious young Americans,” the journal concluded, noting that “64 percent of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution have curbed their attendance habits. Yet, 76 percent of those who never enrolled in college report a decline in religious service attendance.”
Or Santorum may have been referring to a 2006 Harvard study in which 62 percent of college Republicans said “religion is losing its influence on American life.”
But that study negates Santorum’s larger point: It found that “a quarter of students (25%) say they have become more spiritual since entering college, as opposed to only seven percent (7%) who say they have become less spiritual.”
And there’s more evidence that Santorum has it backward. According to a 2011 study in the The Review of Religious Research, the impacts of education on religiosity are complicated, but on balance it concluded that “education positively affects religious participation, devotional activities, and emphasizing the importance of religion in daily life.”
TPM has reached out to team Santorum to check whether there is other evidence to substantiate his claim. We’ll keep you updated.
By: Sahil Kapur, Talking Points Memo, February 26, 2012
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