For-Profit Higher Education

choi

Naomi Schaefer Riley, The University of Adam Smith. In the scramble for money and prestige, colleges lose their focus on education. A business executive thinks he has a solution. Wall Street Journal, Feb 6, 2012

(book review on Andrew S Rosen, Change.edu; Rebooting for the new talent economy. Kaplan, 2012)

My comment:
(a) the book's website:
http://www.change-edu.com/
(b) Kaplan, Inc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaplan,_Inc.
(a for-profit corporation headquartered in New York City and was founded in 1938 by Stanley Kaplan; It is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington Post Company)
(c) There is no question in the eye of law that students are "customers" of a university, be it not-for-profit or for profit.

See paragraphs 25, 26 and 27 in

United States v Brown University in Providence in the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (CA1 1993) 5 F3d 658
http://law.justia.com/cases/fede ... ts/F3/5/658/626013/
(an antitrust case against Ivy Overlap Group whereby participating private universities jointly set financial aids among themselves for students admitted to more than one of the constituent universities; when US Department of Justice warned of impending antitrust enforcement, MIT was the only one which refused to stop; MIT lost at both district court and court of appeals for the first circuit)

I note this review states, "But unlike public and private not-for-profit schools, for profits can be single-minded: The student is the customer. Tuition makes up almost all the revenue of a for-profit school. At private not-for-profits, tuition accounts for only 28% of revenues and at public colleges as little as 13%."

(d) land-grant university
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land-grant_university

Quote: "The Morrill Acts [of 1862 and 1890] funded educational institutions by granting federally controlled land to the states for the states to develop or sell to raise funds to establish and endow 'land-grant' colleges. The mission of these institutions as set forth in the 1862 Act is to focus on the teaching of practical agriculture, science and engineering (though 'without excluding * * * classical studies'), as a response to the industrial revolution and changing social class. This mission was in contrast to the historic practice of higher education to focus on an abstract Liberal Arts curriculum. Ultimately, most land-grant colleges became large public universities that today offer a full spectrum of educational opportunities. However, some land-grant colleges are private schools, including Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.