Hello and welcome to today’s Afternoon Announcements! Have you been watching the Olympics? We hope so. In case you’ve missed out on Alliance President Bob Wise’s dispatches from London, you can find them here. Be sure to check them out!
For-profit colleges lead us off today because they’re the subject of two Congressional reports. First, Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), concludes his two-year investigation with a damning report of for-profit educational institutions. The New York Timesnotes that “For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success,” reports, “taxpayers spent $32 billion in the most recent year on companies that operate for-profit colleges, but the majority of students they enroll leave without a degree, half of those within four months.”
The other report on for-profit education comes from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee. His report, says The Huffington Post, “found that publicly traded college corporations calculate executive compensation ‘predominantly on the profitability of their companies rather than the success of their students.’”
In a quick bit you can file under “handy statistics,” The Huffington Post has a handy slideshow of the states with the highest college completion rates. Spoiler alert, Washington, D.C. has the highest number of 25-34 year olds with college degrees, and Massachusetts is the state with the highest rate.
Today’s final article comes from Maine’s Kennebec Journal. The article discusses the high cost of remedial education in the state. The article notes, “The classes delay students' progress toward degrees and cause financial aid to run out faster, or force the students to borrow more. Remedial courses aren't good for colleges and universities, either, even though they bring in tuition money.” You can read more about the Alliance’s work on the high cost of remedial education here and here.
That’s it for today; we’ll see you tomorrow!
