Non Pioneer Incentives
Is the Problem of For-Profits also the Problem of Non-Profits?
In a recent blog post, Marc Bousquet of The Chronicle of Higher Education, takes on the recent for-profit bashing. Bousquet admits that critics of the for-profit education sector are mostly right:
“sure, the for-profits are just as bad as they say. They fail to graduate students and the students they graduate are often un-, under- and mis-educated. The students go into debt to pay outrageous tuition for the attention of under-qualified faculty, and then fail to find the employment for which they were putatively prepared. And from all of this under-regulated misery and failure, the shareholders are racking up massive capital accumulation,”
But Bousquet says critics from the non-profit education sector should take a figurative “look in the mirror” before they continue their hypocritical tirade.
In fact, notes Bousquet, for-profits “didn’t invent any of this.” All of these essentially deceptive tactics, including what Bousquet has termed the “tuition gold rush,” were “pioneered by the non-profit sector.”
Bousquet lists some of the tactics first employed by non-profits for the past forty years and recently used by for-profits:
- “Teaching students with underqualified faculty, graduate students, and even undergraduates for the past 40 years.”
- “Charge outrageous tuition for degrees which will not lead to employment.”
- “Overcharging students and underpaying faculty [and] accumulating capital–not in shareholders’ pockets, but capital nonetheless, in buildings and grounds, endowments, in tech infrastructure. [Capital] blown by the million on administrator initiatives like big-time sports, social engineering, business ventures, and the pet projects of influential campus or community actors.”
So, writes Bousquet- the problem isn’t just for-profit schools, it’s non-profit colleges and universities and the higher education system as a whole. The deceptive tactics passed down from the non-profits to the for-profits and currently used by the for-profit AND non-profit education sectors need to be eliminated. To “fix” higher education as a whole while stimulating the economy, Bousquet suggests:
- “Make tuition free at public institutions. Heck, go further and provide stipends for housing and expenses. Raise taxes on the “Real Housewives” class to pay for it. Hold mainstream journalist, mass-media outlets and politicians accountable for honesty on education issues. Likewise, encourage higher-ed unions and professional associations to learn something from smart, militant schoolteacher unions in the U.S. and abroad.”
- “Raise standards for the qualifications, training, and continuing professional development of all faculty. Many great researchers need incentives to learn to teach better. Great teachers should have opportunities and incentives for earning terminal degrees and remaining current. This doesn’t mean their job descriptions should be changed: the difference between a bad teaching-only appointment and a pedagogically appropriate teaching-intensive appointment is support for professional currency.”
Bousquet has an arsenal of other suggestions as well, and while many may seem radical, he ultimately calls on for-profit critics to reevaluate their “hypocritical and propagandistic misconstructions” and to set their sights instead on higher education, both non and for-profit, reform as a whole.
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