September/October 2010 Issue

You Know Your College Is Ripping You Off If…

How for-profit schools take students for suckers.

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Read also: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

The for-profit education industry—think University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, and schools owned by Kaplan—is booming. Enrollment at these institutions is growing 5 to 10 times faster than in all of higher ed combined. But with that growth has come an onslaught of criticism (PDF) for hard-sell recruiting tactics (PDF), risky loans, and inflated degrees. Here are three warning signs that your for-profit college may be cheating you out of your money—and an education.

Warning Sign #1: You were recruited at a blackjack table or soup kitchen. For-profit colleges spend huge amounts advertising at bus stops and online, but recruiters also visit (PDF) homeless shelters and casinos, where they often exaggerate their school’s rigorous academics and job-placement success rates.

You know your college is ripping you off if...

Warning Sign #2: You’ll be paying off your student debt well into your golden years. The average debt for a for-profit grad is $32,650, among the highest in all of higher ed. More than 90 percent of for-profit students borrow money, versus 70 percent at private schools and 50 percent at public universities. Several for-profits have been accused (PDF) of saddling (PDF) students with high-interest loans and other onerous terms.

Warning Sign #3: Every time you make a new friend at school, he disappears. Only one-third of for-profit students will have graduated (PDF) six years after they enrolled, compared to 55 percent at public schools and 65 percent at private colleges. Part of the problem is misleading information about a degree’s total cost, or disappointment at the quality of the education received.

Illustration: John Hersey

Also read: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

HERE ARE THE FACTS:

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ONE MORE QUICK THING:

Our fall fundraising drive is off to a rough start, and we very much need to raise $250,000 in the next couple of weeks. If you value the journalism you get from Mother Jones, please help us do it with a donation today.

As we wrote over the summer, traffic has been down at Mother Jones and a lot of sites with many people thinking news is less important now that Donald Trump is no longer president. But if you're reading this, you're not one of those people, and we're hoping we can rally support from folks like you who really get why our reporting matters right now. And that's how it's always worked: For 45 years now, a relatively small group of readers (compared to everyone we reach) who pitch in from time to time has allowed Mother Jones to do the type of journalism the moment demands and keep it free for everyone else.

Please pitch in with a donation during our fall fundraising drive if you can. We can't afford to come up short, and there's still a long way to go by November 5.

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