Frontline Exposes For-Profit College Scam

Be sure to watch this on your local PBS station.

Frontline Press Release:
Higher education is a $400 billion industry fueled by taxpayer money. One of the fastest-growing--and most controversial--sectors of the industry is the for-profit colleges and universities. Unlike traditional colleges that raise money from wealthy alumni and other donors, many for-profit schools sell shares to investors on Wall Street. But what are students getting out of the deal? Critics say a worthless degree and a mountain of debt. Proponents insist they're innovators, widening access to education. FRONTLINE follows the money to uncover how for-profit universities are transforming the way we think about college in America.

Comments That Should Have Been Posts

Someone needs to make sure the masses stay in their place.

Anonymous @ 1:24 posted some good research in the post below.

I posted this over at Nando's blog awhile back, but received no response - let me know what you guys think:

"Just to show everyone how easy it was for our parents compared to our current plight, and just some food for thought in general:

The federal minimum wage from 1980-1981 was $3.10 and from 1981-1990 it was $3.35. If we assume that an average person could get a job paying minimum wage during the school years of 1980-81 to 1982-83 during a three year stint at the University of Michigan Law School, and assuming that person worked 20 hours per week during the 52 weeks of the three years in law school (certainly quite an easy task if you ask me), that person would have made $10,192.00 over the three year period.

Now, how much would tuition have been for those three school years? A grand total of $7,266.80!

In other words, you could work minimum wage jobs during your law school stay and actually come out ahead $2,925.20 when only taking into account tuition versus total minimum wage earnings! The extra money left over represents about $81.25 left over each month.

I realize you would have to take into account food, lodging, transportation, etc. However, average rent was $300.00 (which if you had roomates would be significantly cheaper - say ~$75.00), and everything else was much cheaper. Basically, you really could work minimum wage jobs back then and pretty much cover ALL of your costs for three years of law school. I really don't even know why people took out loans back then (if they did at all).

Now, comparing the numbers today:

Tuition - $129,030.00 for three years of tuition (assuming they don't raise tuition for the next three years...good luck with that).

Michigan minimum wage - $7.40. Working 20 hour weeks for the three years you would make $23,088.00.

Running the numbers, you would be left with a deficit of $105,942.00! And that's not even mentioned housing costs, food, transportation, etc."

With those numbers in mind, I then posed the following question:

"Maybe someone here can clarify this for me, but why did people really even need loans when all this federal student loan legislation was passed? Are you telling me that people really couldn't come up with the money to pay for their tuition back then? I really find that hard to believe. As I pointed out earlier, even as recent as 1985 (and a few years later even) you could completely finance a top notch law school education. Why were the loans needed?"

So does anyone have any thoughts? I really want to know why anyone from that day and age even needed loans to finish school. I realize that I only took numbers from the University of Michigan, but I have checked numbers from other schools and have found them to be quite comparable, and in many instances you could fund an education for much less than the numbers cited above. I'd especially be interested in hearing thoughts from those that graduated college from that time period.

In many ways our society was more equal three decades ago than it is today. We've made progress in dealing with racism, homophobia, and sexism but have gone backwards in terms of dealing with economic inequality. It amazes me that in this recession, colleges and universities still have the nerve to justify increases in tuition and room & board fees. As I commented in the post below, high tuition costs and the burden it has on American families is one of the reasons why the US lags behind many European and Asian countries when it comes to education and cutting edge research, especially in math and science. While other countries pay talented students (debt free!) to study overseas and receive the best education to become tomorrow's leaders in science, medicine, and technology, we seem fine with blaming young people who get in over their heads in student debt simply because they want an education to do something better with their lives.

Angel and Grumpy Young Man make valid points. A college degree shouldn't be a requirement for everyone nor is everyone meant to become an academic, a doctor, or a lawyer. I agree that the ABA needs to be reformed and all of TTT schools shut down. But let's be clear that a good education and making connections with important people at top universities and at Ivy Leagues is one of the few ways a person can move up the socio-economic ladder. Poor, working, and middle class students who are smart and determined enough to overcome the many obstacles to get into a Tier 1 school should not be prevented from attending because they don't have the money. I see the growing inaccessibility to an affordable education as another way the elite can keep anyone else from upsetting the golden applecart of wealth and privilege. Inaccessibility to a quality education whether we're talking about primary school or college is just another form of discrimination and segregation. If more people were as outraged we might actually have a fighting chance at changing the system.

Read. Now.

If you enjoyed our discussion on education and the elite, this is a must read. Here are a few excerpts from The Disadvantages of an Elite Education but I strongly recommend visiting The American Scholar to read the article in its entirety.

It didn’t dawn on me that there might be a few holes in my education until I was about 35. I’d just bought a house, the pipes needed fixing, and the plumber was standing in my kitchen. There he was, a short, beefy guy with a goatee and a Red Sox cap and a thick Boston accent, and I suddenly learned that I didn’t have the slightest idea what to say to someone like him. So alien was his experience to me, so unguessable his values, so mysterious his very language, that I couldn’t succeed in engaging him in a few minutes of small talk before he got down to work. Fourteen years of higher education and a handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. “Ivy retardation,” a friend of mine calls this. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.

....

The first disadvantage of an elite education, as I learned in my kitchen that day, is that it makes you incapable of talking to people who aren’t like you. Elite schools pride themselves on their diversity, but that diversity is almost entirely a matter of ethnicity and race. With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals. At the same time, because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it. Witness the last two Democratic presidential nominees, Al Gore and John Kerry: one each from Harvard and Yale, both earnest, decent, intelligent men, both utterly incapable of communicating with the larger electorate.

But it isn’t just a matter of class. My education taught me to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class. I was given the unmistakable message that such people were beneath me. We were “the best and the brightest,” as these places love to say, and everyone else was, well, something else: less good, less bright. I learned to give that little nod of understanding, that slightly sympathetic “Oh,” when people told me they went to a less prestigious college. (If I’d gone to Harvard, I would have learned to say “in Boston” when I was asked where I went to school—the Cambridge version of noblesse oblige.) I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to elite colleges, often precisely for reasons of class. I never learned that there are smart people who don’t go to college at all.

....

In short, the way students are treated in college trains them for the social position they will occupy once they get out. At schools like Cleveland State, they’re being trained for positions somewhere in the middle of the class system, in the depths of one bureaucracy or another. They’re being conditioned for lives with few second chances, no extensions, little support, narrow opportunity—lives of subordination, supervision, and control, lives of deadlines, not guidelines. At places like Yale, of course, it’s the reverse. The elite like to think of themselves as belonging to a meritocracy, but that’s true only up to a point. Getting through the gate is very difficult, but once you’re in, there’s almost nothing you can do to get kicked out. Not the most abject academic failure, not the most heinous act of plagiarism, not even threatening a fellow student with bodily harm—I’ve heard of all three—will get you expelled. The feeling is that, by gosh, it just wouldn’t be fair—in other words, the self-protectiveness of the old-boy network, even if it now includes girls. Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls “entitled mediocrity.” A is the mark of excellence; A- is the mark of entitled mediocrity. It’s another one of those metaphors, not so much a grade as a promise. It means, don’t worry, we’ll take care of you. You may not be all that good, but you’re good enough.

A Lesson in Education

An unemployed law school friend (who, btw, graduated from my T14
cum laude) forwarded me this Above The Law story about a T14 graduate who got a high-profile and well-paid government job through -how else? - connections:

Fenster, a 29-year-old lawyer who previously worked for a short time at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan, was recently selected by Governor David Paterson to serve as executive director of the Workers’ Compensation Board of New York State.

The article notes that Fenster got the job despite having "no experience in workers' comp or labor law". So how did he get this coveted position after being laid off from his biglaw job last year? Via Inside Workers Comp NY:

I have received a number of communications indicating that Fenster got his resume submitted for this position with the help of an old college buddy from the University of Michigan, Debra Feinberg, and their mutual friend, Stephen Levin. Levin, who ran successfully for City Council from Brooklyn this past November was former Chief of Staff to Assemblyman Vito Lopez, who happens to be the chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. Feinberg, who was a legislative aide to Assemblyman Lopez, was the campaign manager for Levin.

Lopez’s need to place somebody in a job came up at the same time there was a vacancy at the Workers Comp Board for a “short-timer” as everybody understands that come the first month or two of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, this job will be filled with someone with real experience.

This is consistent with what we’ve heard here at ATL, in comments and by private emails. We’ve also heard that Debra Feinberg may be more than just Fenster’s “buddy.” From an ATL tipster:

[Fenster’s] girlfriend, Debby Feinberg, works as a Democratic operative in Brooklyn. People don’t just get that type of position by submitting their resume [as Fenster seemed to suggest to the NYT]. Jeff is a good guy and was a reasonably decent student at Michigan, but it was a classic case of “it’s not what you know but who you know.”

I'm not posting this story to bash Mr. Fenster and the method in which he secured an amazing job. Kudos to him. This is simply a reminder to readers that oftentimes doing everything right isn't enough to get the job. Nepotism is a tale as old as time. It happens during good economic times as well as bad and it is still the single most important factor in getting a job. It is how the world's elite and their friends and family keep their hands on the reigns of wealth and power.

I wrote in my inaugural post yesterday about the education myth - that it does not guarantee more wealth and success. Graduates of Tier 2 and 3 law schools know this all too well. I'd like to make an addendum to that statement. Education helps the children of those already in power have a better chance at more wealth and success. The fact that the majority of the students you find at T14 law schools come from upper middle class and wealthy backgrounds is not a mistake. Angel and I come from working class backgrounds. We are an anomaly in the halls of T14 schools and biglaw. This, wherein lies the problem for many of our readers.

Higher education - from rankings to admissions - is a system that for the most part benefits the ruling class. If you're poor or middle class it is often a lose-lose situation. Poor children usually don't receive a quality high school education and don't have the money for test prep courses to make them competitive candidates for the best colleges let alone the best law schools. The brightest of the poor students often turn down opportunities to attend better schools because they can't afford the high tuition. They certainly don't have the connections to get the best jobs after graduation - or any job during a recession. Poor students will nearly always take the greatest risk in investing in a costly yet lower-ranked education. They're damned if they do and they're damned if they don't. Which is why more people are beginning to understand that apprenticeships in a trade such as plumbing might be a better route for working class children. Construction and plumbing pays well and it is a more realistic expectation than, say, becoming the executive director of the Workers’ Compensation Board of New York State. We now know those jobs are off limits to applicants without the right connections.

More from the Above the Law article:

Almost all of the folks we’ve met who have been lucky enough to land legal jobs during the Great Recession did so through networking or connections. This is true not just for people who have found jobs at, say, small law firms, but even some lawyers we now who found jobs with the federal government. It’s helpful to have a friend “on the inside” at a government agency, who can let you know immediately when a position opens up — sometimes even before it’s publicly posted — and who can bring your application to the attention of the hiring authority.

Some of you might not like the role that connections play in the job hunt, since it’s not exactly a pure meritocracy. But it’s the way the world works. So get used to it — and order up some business cards for yourself (even if you’re currently “in transition” / unemployed, or just a law student; you can put your personal contact info on your cards).

True. It is certainly how the world works. But how does a law school grad from Podunk, USA "network"? It isn't so easy for a person who went to school on merit but does not possess the family connections, a boyfriend, or a girlfriend in a position of influence and power to simply network to get a job. Angel and I could go to a hundred networking events and short of marrying a partner or politician, I doubt either of us would come away with a job offer. The job almost always still goes to a friend, a friend of a friend, a daughter, a son, a neighbor's child, a member of their church, temple, alma mater, or boarding school. In short, the job goes to someone who belongs in their social class, their community, their neighborhood, their world. The terms networking and connections are used by people who already have an "in" with a personal link. This recession has taught the poor a lesson in education: it is directly tied to wealth and privilege and no amount of it will put you on the same playing field as someone with a connection.

Finally, Colleges are Trying to Prepare Student for REAL LIFE!!!! It's about Fucking Time!

Although I think that most colleges that charge over $10K a year are toilet bowls, I have to give credit where credit is due.  Colleges have started to see that most liberal arts degree prepare you for nothing aside from a life of being a parents' basement dweller who smokes pot and philosophizes.  A tipster, Maria, pointed me to an article about how colleges are trying to become more relevant.  Ha. Thomas College, in Maine, is allowing students to come back after six months of unemployment "...to take classes free, or have the college pay their student loans for a year."  Love it!!!   A college that is, on its own accord, making it their business to get you a job!  That is the least they can do for $28,850 a year. University of Louisiana and Michigan State are doing away with worthless majors like Philosophy and American Studies.    Bravo!!!  English Majors at University of Texas are learning how to write RESUMES, of all things!?  As a reader of my blog, you should know that I have been hoping that this would happen.  I'm pleasantly surprised that colleges are taking initiative to make an education relevant to the workplace. I'm SHOCKED that they are doing it without the financial pressure of student loans that are dischargeable in bankruptcy. Previously, I was pretty sure that it would take a change in the bankruptcy code to make this happen. I thought they would have to feel the pinch of students being unable to pay for their education because loans would be harder to come by.  I STILL think that an education is way more expensive than it should be, considering it often does not prepare students for employment.


In any case, this is a major step in the right direction.