Thomas Edison College President: Proposed Higher Education

[sanantone]

What I don't understand is why every college needs to become licensed in every state in which they offer online courses. Every school that is legally in existence is already authorized to operate in at least one state, so they are being regulated. While states have varying rules, regulations from every other state would mostly be redundant. This hurts the public and non-profit schools more than it hurts the for-profits. The large for-profits have the cash on hand to become licensed in every single state. Small non-profits would have to find a way to raise the money, and public universities would have to beg their state legislatures/taxpayers for more funding. This just reduces the number of non-profit options for students and leaves them mostly with just the few in-state options and the most abusive for-profits for distance education.

Texas will not allow any out-of-state program that has an internship or practicum requirement. I can somewhat understand the reasoning for this, but this does nothing to 99% of the for-profit programs out there. I'm sure Texas didn't make this rule to go after for-profit colleges, but the intention of the federal government was for state regulations to affect for-profits.

Dr. Pruitt's main focus was the regulation requiring that a certain percentage of students graduate within a certain period of time. According to him, 60% of college students are now non-traditional (over the age of 25). Of course, many of these people are working adults and/or have children and are attending part-time. It takes twice as long to finish when you attend part-time.

The solutions to reign for-profits are simple, but some of these solutions would affect non-profit and open enrollment schools. First, the federal government could put pressure on the accreditors to require admissions standards. The federal government was already successful is pressuring the HLC to raise its standards. Second, the federal government could lower the cap on undergraduate student loans for independent students. For-profits and some non-profits charge as much as they do because they can. They know that students can get enough aid to cover their tuition and fees. Another option would be quite drastic and controversial, but it would only affect the for-profits. The federal government could just flat out refuse to use taxpayer dollars to make for-profit colleges billion dollar companies. I wasn't a business major, but other than maybe defense contractors that are also controversial, what other industry has mega companies that get more than 90% of their profits from public money? This is corporate welfare.