The Economy May Force #HigherEd to Change Business Model

Stephanie Lee and Ben Eisen have a report on Inside Higher Ed this morning, detailing how the financial aid segment of higher education is mirroring the changes seen in colleges and universities, and in the economy in general. These changes, Lee and Esien report, may result in a new business model:

…At this fiscally unstable moment, higher education organizations are trying to get a handle on just how their roles are changing or, perhaps, should change. A missed conference may not seem like more than a lost chance to rub elbows and enjoy a free lunch. But Jerry Sullivan, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, said that while times are tough, “This is also a time when [colleges] need to be creative and talk with other people about new strategies.”

In the future, conferences could mean shorter, local programming instead of one nationwide meeting, said Kruger, of the personnel administrators’ group. The recession is forcing universities to re-evaluate their core structure, he said, and organizations must follow suit.

“The interesting question in the long term is, does all of this … change the fundamental business models of associations?” he said. “You get on an airplane and go to a meeting…. If that changes, how do we evolve to a new model? We don’t know if any of the changes we’re seeing are going to be permanent. Then it’s not a matter of waiting it out — it’s a matter of changing your business model.”

To read the complete report, read “Higher Ed Groups in Survival Mode” on Inside Higher Ed >>

Overwhelmed with Student Loan Debt? (Video)

Daniel de Vise at WaPo has information for students and graduates Drowning in Student Debt:

To read more about Lifelines in the Student Loan Sea: Programs Offer Income-Based Repayment and Debt Forgiveness visit the Washington Post >>

Also, de Vise has followup, Student Loan Measure Clears the House Panel:

A bill that cleared a House committee Tuesday would largely remove private lenders from the federal student loan industry, generating an estimated $87 billion savings over 10 years to fund more government grants and loans.

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2009 would eliminate an entire category of student loans issued by private lenders and subsidized by the federal government, vastly expanding direct lending by the government starting next July. Democrats would use the savings to fund a $40 billion increase in federal Pell Grant scholarships over 10 years, $10 billion in community college upgrades and $8 billion in pre-kindergarten changes, among other uses…(more)

What’s on your summer reading list? YU wants to know!

Are you catching up on some reading this summer? Join the discussion on Yorktown University’s main Facebook Page. We’d love to hear from you!

Well, well, well…it seems tuition is even rising at community colleges, now.

Daniel L. Bennett, the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, explains that the nation’s most “affordable” schools may be collateral damage in the Obama Adminstration’s “reform” plan:

CCAP advocates that more students, especially those on fence about going to college, begin their postsecondary education at a community college because it is a much more cost effective way to knock out some credits and explore whether more education is right for them. If the student decides that college is not for them and that they would rather pursue a vocation, then they are likely not burdened with an exorbitant financial loss (or crippling student debt) that would have otherwise been incurred at a 4-year school. This also saves the taxpayer some money, so it is a win-win situation.

However, tuition and fees at community colleges could soon be rapidly rising thanks in part to President Obama’s higher education “reform”, mainly an increase in the Federal Pell Grant maximum and the $12 billion community college initiative.

Continue reading on the CCAP >>

Recording of ‘Investing in For Profit Education’ Seminar Now Available

Investing in For Profit Education
A Seminar Sponsored by Yorktown University
FreedomFest
July 10, 2009
Las Vegas, NV

Participants:
Richard Vedder, Department of Economics, Ohio University and author of Going Broke by Degree
James Rowan, managing partner, Stifel Nicolaus and Company, Inc., Baltimore, MD

Listen to Audio:
FreedomFest 2009 – MP3 format

Has ‘profit’ become a bad word?

Jane S. Shaw has an commentary on the Pope Center: “For-profit higher education is like the Rodney Dangerfield of academia—it gets little or no respect.”

When Mark Pelesh speaks to legislators on behalf of his for-profit education company, Corinthian Colleges, Inc., he is often surprised at how strongly they resist the concept underlying it. Many are “skeptical if not completely hostile to the idea that for-profit and education belong in the same sentence,” he said.

Speaking at a workshop for state legislators in Atlanta on July 15, Pelesh sounded frustrated. He can’t understand how so many influential people can fail to see that companies like his are fulfilling the mission of access that traditional schools claim to be following, but do not.

Pelesh is an executive vice president of Corinthian, a publicly traded company that has 106 campuses and 85,000 students. It reaches out to a racially diverse population of working adults, many of whom have low incomes. The completion rate for its programs is 60 to 70 per cent, and the placement rate for its graduates, in the fields they have prepared for, is 80 percent. Community colleges, he said, have completion rates of about 25 per cent.

Yet Corinthian’s role in helping these students improve their lives is ignored or disparaged by skeptics who treat for-profit schools as though they are diploma mills. For some reason, said Pelesh, even conservative legislators (who, one might assume, would favor profit-making companies) “take on very different attitudes when the subject of higher education comes up.” His explanation: Most legislators, like himself, attended a four-year college right out of high school and they have an “emotional tie to that background.”

Pelesh was one of three speakers at a workshop at the annual meeting of ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). ALEC is a membership organization composed of conservative state legislators and private-sector businesses and nonprofits. It offers a podium for the private sector to inform legislators about issues of interest. In this session on for-profit education, moderated by Vicky Murray of the Pacific Research Institute, the speakers were executives from two for-profit education companies, Corinthian and Higher Ed Holdings, and free-market economist Richard Vedder.

Their aim was to reduce the hostility to for-profits—and win some friends…Continue reading on the Pope Center >>

Bankruptcies Up in Colorado

Aldo Svaldi, of the Denver Post reports:

Heavy mortgage debts and a tough economy pushed Colorado bankruptcy filings up 38 percent in the first half of the year.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Colorado recorded 13,041 new filings in the first half of the year, compared with 9,470 in the same period of 2008.

“I’ve been doing this long enough to see four recessions, and this is the worst I’ve seen in the last 24 years,” said Stephen Berken, a Denver bankruptcy lawyer.

Berken, who filed four cases Wed nesday, said unmanageable mortgage debts are behind more filings. Historically, high medical bills, divorce and job losses trigger filings.

People with businesses in real estate, construction and mortgages are showing up in increasing numbers, said John Turner, a Colorado Springs lawyer.

“A lot of people were speculators who tried to invest in real estate,” he said. “They are a big source of clients.”

Small businesses, especially retailers, are hurting as consumers tighten spending. Also, business failures are compounding the problem…Continue reading on DenverPost.com >>

Seeking Alpha Puts the Rising Cost of #HigherEd Tuition in Perspective

Jussi Keppo had a report on on Seeking Alpha last month comparing the rising cost of tuition to the rising cost of housing and the GDP:

Everyone now seems to agree that US house prices got out of hand and that the US health care costs are at an unsustainable level. Well, everything is relative: Between 1987 and 2009 US college tuition and fees increased by a staggering 326% (6.8% annually), while medical costs went up by “only” 186% (4.9% annually) and house prices by 135% (4.0% annually). Note that due to the housing boom, during 1987 – 2007 house prices went up by 252% (6.5% annually), almost as much as college tuition and fees in that period. These trends are illustrated in Figure 1, where all the three components are drawn so that they start at 100…Continue reading on Seeking Alpha >>

State Schools v. ‘State-Related’ Schools and the Stimulu$

In an Inside Higher Ed report today entitled, “Go Ask Arne,” Jack Stripling discusses the irony of schools and governors wanting to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to independence and funding:

When Gov. Ed Rendell decided Pennsylvania State University didn’t deserve federal stimulus dollars, the university’s president took his complaints to the man holding the purse strings.

In a June 29 letter, Graham Spanier urged U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to reject Rendell’s application for education-related stimulus funding, hoping this would “compel” the governor to share the dollars with Penn State. Rendell has argued that Penn State and three other “state related” institutions are not entitled to the money, because they “are not fully public universities.” Unlike Pennsylvania’s state-owned institutions, state-related universities are granted greater autonomy in exchange for receiving a smaller portion of state appropriations.

“If the Department approves this application as it is written, it gives governors in every other state the ability to pick and choose which public institutions they may support with federal dollars,” Spanier wrote.

“Penn State’s role as a public institution of higher education is clear in Pennsylvania statutory and case law. It is not in the Governor’s power to arbitrarily redefine the legal status of institutions simply because he does not exercise ‘absolute control’ over them.”

Penn State officials take issue with Rendell’s assertion that the university is only quasi-public, but there’s some irony to the institution’s position. It has previously used its “state related” status as justification for not operating like a public institution in many ways…Continue reading on Inside Higher Ed >>

Value of Online Ed: Using technology to give students ‘control of their interactions’ has a positive effect on student learning.

Inside Higher Ed this week reported on a study by the U.S. Department of Education verifying what online educators have known for some time: There actually are advantages to online learning. The study indicates that although online education is not ideal for everyone, and that not all of the teaching techniques employed by online instructors are effective, the asychronous environment can aid the learning process for many students:

“…While the new study provides a strong endorsement of online learning, it also notes findings about the relative success (or lack thereof) of various teaching techniques used in online courses. The use of video or online quizzes — frequently encouraged for online education — “does not appear to enhance learning,” the report says.

Using technology to give students “control of their interactions” has a positive effect on student learning, however. “Studies indicate that manipulations that trigger learner activity or learner reflection and self-monitoring of understanding are effective when students pursue online learning as individuals,” the report says.

Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. “Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning,” the report says.

In noting caveats about the findings, the study returns to the issue of time.

“Despite what appears to be strong support for online learning applications, the studies in this meta-analysis do not demonstrate that online learning is superior as a medium,” the report says. “In many of the studies showing an advantage for online learning, the online and classroom conditions differed in terms of time spent, curriculum and pedagogy. It was the combination of elements in the treatment conditions (which was likely to have included additional learning time and materials as well as additional opportunities for collaboration) that produced the observed learning advantages. At the same time, one should note that online learning is much more conducive to the expansion of learning time than is face-to-face instruction.”

In a statement*, Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged educators to consider the report’s findings…Continue reading on Inside Higher Ed >>

(Hat-Tip: JobMonkey.com)