boutons_deux
11-06-2015, 02:43 PM
For-profit universities have had another rough year, with big players facing federal scrutiny for everything from predatory loans (http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-sues-for-profit-corinthian-colleges-for-predatory-lending-scheme/) to outright fraud (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/05/12/itt-educational-services-sec-fraud-charges/27169703/).
Now attention is turning to the schools’ accreditors.
Accreditors are supposed to make sure that schools provide students with a quality education. They are not government agencies, but wield enormous power: Schools need accreditors’ stamps of approval to maintain access to the government’s annual $170 billion in federal student aid (http://www.acct.org/files/Events/GLIs/ACCT%20August%202015.pdf).
Losing accreditation would be fatal for most for-profit schools since they rely on federal aid for much of their income (https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/proprietary). But accreditors rarely crack down (http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-watchdogs-of-college-education-rarely-bite-1434594602), even when students are struggling. One of the areas where students at for-profits face extra burden is debt: While only one-tenth of college students attend for-profit schools (http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-takes-action-protect-americans-predatory-poor-performing-career-colleges), they account for nearly half of all students’ defaults.
What role are accreditors playing? Using recently released federal data (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/), ProPublica analyzed how students are faring under the various accreditors that oversee many for-profit schools.
One accreditor stands out: The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, also known as ACICS. It oversees hundreds of mainly for-profit schools where students struggle at remarkably high rates.
Just 35 percent of students at a typical ACICS-accredited four-year college graduate, the lowest rate for any accreditor. Nationally, the graduation rate at four-year schools is around 59 percent. (Read our methodology (https://www.propublica.org/article/methodology-how-we-analyzed-college-accreditation-data) for details on how we crunched the numbers for our analysis.)
“If you don’t graduate anyone, you can’t make claims that your program is any good,” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress.
Students at ACICS-accredited four-year schools also take on more debt than students at other schools with similar accreditors, typically about $26,000 in federal loans.
And then students struggle more to pay off the loans: At a typical ACICS-accredited school, about 60 percent of students were unable to repay even $1 of their loan principal within three years of graduation. That’s 23 percentage points higher than the national average. (Miller also did a study this summer that found that more than one in five students at ACICS-accredited schools (https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/31134358/Miller-Accreditation-brief-9.1.pdf) default on their loans.)
http://www.propublica.org/article/accreditors-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-flowing-to-for-profit-colleges
Now attention is turning to the schools’ accreditors.
Accreditors are supposed to make sure that schools provide students with a quality education. They are not government agencies, but wield enormous power: Schools need accreditors’ stamps of approval to maintain access to the government’s annual $170 billion in federal student aid (http://www.acct.org/files/Events/GLIs/ACCT%20August%202015.pdf).
Losing accreditation would be fatal for most for-profit schools since they rely on federal aid for much of their income (https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/about/data-center/school/proprietary). But accreditors rarely crack down (http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-watchdogs-of-college-education-rarely-bite-1434594602), even when students are struggling. One of the areas where students at for-profits face extra burden is debt: While only one-tenth of college students attend for-profit schools (http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-takes-action-protect-americans-predatory-poor-performing-career-colleges), they account for nearly half of all students’ defaults.
What role are accreditors playing? Using recently released federal data (https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/data/), ProPublica analyzed how students are faring under the various accreditors that oversee many for-profit schools.
One accreditor stands out: The Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, also known as ACICS. It oversees hundreds of mainly for-profit schools where students struggle at remarkably high rates.
Just 35 percent of students at a typical ACICS-accredited four-year college graduate, the lowest rate for any accreditor. Nationally, the graduation rate at four-year schools is around 59 percent. (Read our methodology (https://www.propublica.org/article/methodology-how-we-analyzed-college-accreditation-data) for details on how we crunched the numbers for our analysis.)
“If you don’t graduate anyone, you can’t make claims that your program is any good,” said Ben Miller, senior director for postsecondary education at the Center for American Progress.
Students at ACICS-accredited four-year schools also take on more debt than students at other schools with similar accreditors, typically about $26,000 in federal loans.
And then students struggle more to pay off the loans: At a typical ACICS-accredited school, about 60 percent of students were unable to repay even $1 of their loan principal within three years of graduation. That’s 23 percentage points higher than the national average. (Miller also did a study this summer that found that more than one in five students at ACICS-accredited schools (https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/31134358/Miller-Accreditation-brief-9.1.pdf) default on their loans.)
http://www.propublica.org/article/accreditors-billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-flowing-to-for-profit-colleges