For-Profit Universities

For-Profit Universities

Tressie McMillan Cottom William A. Darity, Jr. Editors For-Profit Universities The Shifting Landscape of Marketized Higher Education

Editors Tressie McMillan Cottom Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Sociology Richmond, Virginia, USA William A. Darity, Jr. Duke University Durham, North Carolina, USA ISBN 978-3-319-47186-0 ISBN 978-3-319-47187-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-47187-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962319 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image RTimages / Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

The papers in this volume were made possible with a Conference Grant from the American Educational Research Association in 2012. v

Contents Introduction 1 Tressie McMillan Cottom What Is the Difference? Public Funding of For-Profit, Not-For-Profit, and Public Institutions 9 Bonnie K. Fox Garrity For-Profit Higher Education in the UK: The Politics of Market Creation 27 Jonathan White For Profit U Through the Eyes of IPEDS: Warts and All 53 Victor M.H. Borden Social Capital Development and For-Profit Post-secondary Education: A Planned Study 73 Thomas A. Mays Stratification and the Public Good: The Changing Ideology of Higher Education 99 Gaye Tuchman vii

viii Contents Who Attends For-Profit Institutions?: The Enrollment Landscape 119 Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, Steve Stokes, and William A. Darity, Jr. Enrollment and Degree Completion at For- Profit Colleges versus Traditional Institutions 159 D. Diego Torres, Jane Rochmes, and David J. Harding Index 223

Author Biographies Victor M.H. Borden is Professor of Education in the Department of Leadership Studies and Policy at Indiana University. He also directs the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education as well as the Project on Academic Success, both within the IU Center for Postsecondary Research, in addition to serving as Senior Advisor for the Executive Vice President for University of Academic Affairs Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and faculty association with Harvard University s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Her book, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy will be released on The New Press Winter 2016. She has published on race/class/gender, credentialing, work and technology in the new economy. William A. Darity, Jr. is the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies and Economics and Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. His primary area of research is Stratification Economics, and he edits a series for the Cambridge University Press under the same title. Bonnie K. Fox Garrity is the Director of Operations at Accord Integrated Academic and Financial Information. She has done extensive comparative research on patterns of enrollment at public, not-for-profit, and for profit institutions of higher education. ix

x AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES David J. Harding is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. Harding s research interests lie in inequality, poverty, urban studies, race, and qualitative and quantitative methodology. He was one of the earliest researchers to engage in systematic data-driven investigations of for-profit institutions of higher education. Thomas A. Mays is Assistant Professor of Business Technology at Miami University (Ohio). He is an expert on the application of microelectronic technologies in both the business and higher education arenas. Jane Rochmes is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University. Jane s research integrates interests in social context, stratification, and education. She is especially interested in how aspects of schooling perpetuate or ameliorate racial and socioeconomic inequality. Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe currently serves as a Visiting Associate Professor of Economics at Bucknell University and is the Founder and President of the Women s Institute for Science, Equity and Race. Dr. Sharpe has three primary areas of research interest: the demography of higher Education, the demography of the STEM workforce, and racial, ethnic and gender inequality. David Diego Torres is a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University. He has a particular interest in child cognitive development, social class and ethnicity, and academic outcomes. Gaye Tuchman is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. Over the course of her career, she has engaged both in ethnographic inquiry and studies in historical methods. Her primary areas of research interest are sociologies of culture, gender, and higher education. Jonathan White is the Bargaining Policy and Negotiations Official for the University and College Union in the UK. He led the union s campaign against government plans to allow for-profit higher education providers greater access to taxpayers money in the form of student loans.

List of Figures Fig. 1 Total loans and grants paid out to students enrolled with private providers, 2007/8 to 2012/13 (Applying Student Number Controls to Alternative Providers with Designated Courses, Annex A, pp. 23 26) 31 Fig. 1 Enrollment as a percentage of total postsecondary enrollment, Title IV institutions, 1995 2014 77 Fig. 1 Sector share-by-intent and intent share-by-sector (person-months) 173 Fig. 2 Proportion of NLSY97 respondents ever attending each sector 175 Fig. 3 Proportion of NLSY97 respondents ever attending each sector by sex 176 Fig. 4 Proportion of NLSY97 respondents ever attending each sector by race/ethnicity 176 Fig. 5 Proportion of NLSY97 respondents ever attending each sector by parental educational attainment 177 Fig. 6 Cumulative probability of associate s degree receipt by institutional sector type (unadjusted Kaplan-Meier failure estimate) 184 Fig. 7 Cumulative probability of bachelor s degree receipt by institutional sector (unadjusted Kaplan-Meier failure estimate) 185 xi

List of Tables Table 1 Growth in student support costs at alternative providers, 2007/8 to 2012/13 30 Table 2 Totals paid to for-profit subsidiaries in 2011 as a proportion of the total paid to alternative providers 32 Table 3 Totals paid to for-profit subsidiaries in 2013 as a proportion of the total paid to alternative providers 33 Table 4 Acquisition or founding of UK private providers by transnational parent companies 40 Table 5 Acquisition or founding of UK private providers by private equity funds 42 Table 1 Trends in number of institutions and total enrollment by control, academic years 1991 92, 2001 02 and 2011 12 56 Table 2 Institutions, enrollments and awards by sector, 2011 12 58 Table 3 Distribution of enrollment size by control, Fall 2011 headcount enrollment 60 Table 4 Key student characteristics, Fall 2011 enrolled students 61 Table 5 Student financial aid: Grants and federal loans distributed to undergraduate students, academic year 2010 11 63 Table 6 Percent of total Pell Grants and federal loans relative to total enrollment by control 64 Table 7 Graduation rates among the 2005 first-time, full-time cohorts 65 Table 8 Bachelor s and higher degrees conferred by control, Table 9 academic year 2011 12 67 Associate s degrees and certificates awarded by sector, academic year 2011 12 68 Table 10 Key staffing characteristics by control, Fall 2011 69 Table 1 Social capital dimensions and education related examples 88 xiii

xiv List of Tables Table 2 Internal consistency results of college impact on social capital development survey items 90 Table 1 Undergraduate enrollment at for-profits by age 126 Table 2 Graduate enrollment at for-profits by age 132 Table 3 Undergraduate enrollment at for-profit institutions: 1995 2011 138 Table 4 Graduate enrollment at for-profit institutions: 1995 2011 149 Table 1 Weighted characteristics of NLSY97 respondents at baseline (n = 7,620) 172 Table 2 Percent of overlap between two postsecondary sectors 178 Table 3 Predictors of attending a for-profit college relative to ever attending other sectors and never attending college (logit coefficients) 180 Table 4 Degree attainment rates after 4, 6, and 8 years by sector ever attended by degree type (associate s or bachelor s) 183 Table 5 Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining an associate s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought. (n = 7,610; 594,772 person-months) 187 Table 6 Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining a bachelor s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought. (n = 7,617; 625,167 person-months) 190 Table A1 Full model results for Table 5: Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining an associate s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought. (n = 7,610; 594,772 person-months) 197 Table A2 Full model results for Table 6: Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining a bachelor s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought. (n = 7,610; 594,772 person-months) 198 Table B1 Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining an associate s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought by race/ethnicity, gender, and parent s education. (n = 7,610; 594,772 person-months) 200 Table B2 Logistic regression coefficients for likelihood of attaining a bachelor s degree by cumulative months within sector by degree being sought by race/ethnicity, gender, and parent s education. (n = 7,610; 594,772 person-months) 208