Literature Review 1

 

Title: FOR PROFIT HIGHER EDUCATION: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success
Authors: Prepared by the COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS UNITED STATES SENATE
Quotes
“Many for-profit colleges fail to make the necessary investments in student support services that have been shown to help students succeed in school and afterwards, a deficiency that undoubtedly contributes to high withdrawal rates…This may help to explain why more than half a million students who enrolled in 2008-9 left without a degree or Certificate by mid-2010…Publicly traded companies operating for-profit colleges had an average profit margin of 19.7 percent, generated a total of $3.2 billion in pre-tax profit and paid an average of  $7.3 million to their chief executive officers in 2009." (executive summary p1,2)
This is important to my paper because it combines for-profits disregard for student success, their high failure rates, and how the current model does create a profit. 

Key terms:
For-profit colleges- schools owned and operated by businesses. They are ultimately accountable by law for the returns they produce for shareholders. "Federal law and regulations currently do not align the incentives of for-profit colleges so that the colleges succeed financially when students succeed."(1)

This report has extreme value to my case. What the government defines in this paper as harmful effects of for-profits are the same reasons why I don't want for-profits expanding into the medical field. These reasons are high failure rates, high tution, and low academic investments.