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Ronin

The problem isn't imo with the colleges after all.

You are either an informed citizen and responsible consumer or not, by the time you enroll in tertiary education.

It's not like people who buy their education on un-payable loans would be leading financially stable lives otherwise.

If you can't add up the real costs of a loan; What the hell are you looking for in tertiary education?

@companies that carter people like that:
Contrary to popular believe that they are scum, I personally imagine them to be people who are just unable to calculate costs themselves. People who are crooks cater crooks, people who are religiously delusional cater their religiously delusional peers and people who don't know that a business built on a time delayed scam are usually leaving the person who runs them in jail or at least as a penniless bum cater people who can't figure out loans.

I always found free price formation interesting, because it's still, even though it's the foundation of any deregulated market, very hard to accept as a force for bettering the outcome of everyone.
I am not a fan of a free market for education though. The risk does not outweigh the gain.

There is no undistorted education market without public money anyways;
That kills the intention of making a self-reliant cheaper alternative. All I read the profit schools do is finding tricks to use the regulations to get more public funding, rather than resulting in a net saving.

The profit schools try to create their funding as established in this thread from 3 sources:
Cooperate
Tuition
Public

I don't think that there is one of these that is inherently poisonous;
This comes that in profit schools all of them together amount to a collapse of the best interest of one group as they are played against each other.
IMO for a working educational facility, there should be one of the sources clearly identifiable as the major sponsor.

Public schools are proven to be a working concept, because we know which interest the money follows. Goals are clear cut and the organisations are thus easily rated in quality and that enables trust in the system

Private schools that mainly live on tuition money again show us the same result.

Institutions that are cooperate funded either in sponsoring, or through facilitating post graduate level research that pays itself are also a rather traditional approach.

I think that the problem arises as soon as you mix up those parts, because that risks success at reaching the promised goal of making everyone happy.
Though it's technically possible, the incentive is alleviated.

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hian

For the sake of clarity, bear in mind that I am by no means saying private bussiness is bad.

Simply that, by the nature of the service being provided here, namely education, I think it is a mistake to treat the pupils as consumers. They're pupils, end of story.
A bussiness is a bussiness, and a school is a school. I don't believe the two should be mixed more than absolutely necessery(I.E beyond the economics need to run and maintain the place)

Our societies are founded around government structures, and if people don't like that, they are fully free to go create an anarchy in some desolate place. For this reason, I find it utterly baffling that people would have so much against government controlled or government sponsored projects - After all, that's what the government are there for - Governing. By extension, I believe that the responsibility of providing(and regulating) top notch education lies mainly with the government.

As I see it, making education private is the ultimate cop-out in terms of keeping the population "enlightened", and providing for future stability.
At a large scale, it makes it impossible to ensure general quality of education,
and it will polarize society, just for the sake of few individuals who either are only concerned with making a profit, or have some aditional agenda they want to drive through their schools(like religious schools and so forth).

I suffer from no delusion about the nature of people who run private educational services - I don't think they are scum either - but I don't care as much about their motives, as I care about the disservice they're doing to the education system in their greed or ignorance(for it is one or the other).

I don't mind public schools charging a certain amount for tuition, or taking money from private holders either - simply that the school should be run as a government institution, not by private people with a large bank accounts.
If people are so interested in aiding the educational system, then donate the money, or invest as an interest group in education projects laid forth by the government.
If you don't like the current education policy, then get into politics, and change stuff(if you're rich enough to build schools, you're probably rich enough to influence politics even more).

The moment someone goes "well, I don't like this, imma just build my own school", it reeks strongly of bullshit IMO.

For this reason, I am principally against private education.

As for the loans:

I think you're overly simplifying things here -
Making one mistake, by miscalculating your own ability is something common among all people, of all ages and creeds.
To say "well, if you were stupid enough to take the loan, you would have screwed up otherwise anyways" is a gross assumption that is hard to substantiate.

It also completely removes any responsibility the government has(which IMO they have), for education.
If the goverment had proper educational options available to all people, and private institution weren't an option, people wouldn't be taking those loans to begin with.

Furthermore, it also doesn't take into account the nature of the loans themselves -
Which when introduced to students are made out to look much more reasonable than ordinairy loans.
If course, "you did it, your mistake" type of thinking is reasonable and easily understandable it doesn't cut it in this scenario.

It's much like the police not bothering to help a guy being mugged, because he "was stupid enough to walk into a neighbourhood where the chances of being robbed are as a person of his profile, is 99.9%".
Students are targeted by the organizations offering these loans, they are in a situation where they most likely need it, and although plenty of people could do something about it, only a few actually step up to the task.
This is pretty sad in my opinion.

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Ronin

I see what you mean and I think you are right on the fact, that loans payments aren't easily planed.

However, even that is commonly neglected, because people go "soft" on people just don't.

In fact it's very much the governments responsibility to create the ability in people to be able to plan their financial future, both by building a reliably economy and by giving everyone the ability and consciousness needed to take up loans.
The appropriate point of time for that is in the early secondary education, which means way before college, which is mostly public.

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hian

I can agree with this though. The high school I went to, has an old tradition with focusing on economics. From going there, I'm pretty much of the opinion that a basic course in economics and market economy should be mandatory in high school(or maybe even junior high).
It's arguably more important to todays students, than, for instance, simply rehashing the same history lessons(in Norways case, also religion/lifestyle studies) that students have been going through yearly since the age of 6.

But this just reinforces my point really. The only way this would be possible, would be through government interferance, and then mainly in public schools, lest you run the risk of private institutions(once again) interfering with policy. It clearly reinforces the idea that the government needs a firm hand in education, and that education should always be an important point of discussion with a focus on reforms for improvement.

Keeping people educated is the first step to creating a working society.
If education isn't regulated properly, nor centralized, you're simply asking for trouble.

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lothia

The most well known for profit school is University of Phoenix and most online schools. Public / Private Universities are not for profit (at least not the most common ones)

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Attila

Speaking from personal experience, community colleges and universities are non-profit, private colleges are money hogs. They build fountains, parks and more housing around the campus while having only 2 classes that are required for my major in a school of 15000 students. Go figure.

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Paladuck

The most straightforward way I can think of to go about doing your research is to look at the graduation statistics of a representative non-profit and for-profit institution: pick similar ones based on average entering student GPA/SAT or maybe the dollar spent per student. Then compare relevant statistics like percent employed at graduation and you can begin to analyze whether for-profit schools are worse educationally.

You could also look at the tuition paid per student and how much money the school spends per student. I know public universities have this info floating around but it might be hard to attain for a for-profit school.

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