For-profit

Brandon Carter

Although many will say that universities exist only to assist in educating the public, they may have not considered that more for-profit colleges are starting to appear and hurt the education sector. According to Christopher Lucas in his book American Higher Education, he points out that for much of the early years colleges existed in order to provide an education and nothing else. However he also points out that there are certain universities that began to appear in the late twentieth century that are solely for-profit. For example, according to Kim Strosnider, at trade attorney, for-profit universities make up a 3.5 billion dollar-a-year industry that is mostly run by national corporations.

In addition, colleges like these hurt the education system in general more than they claim to help. One such way they hurt the college sector is by taking up more than their appropriated share of funding. While they may help to keep a competitive market in the college sector, these college are built to earn a profit. They take as much money as they can get from government handouts, which a majority of the time is greater than what community colleges receive, and lessen the amount of aid available to other colleges. In turn, other colleges have less money to offer as aid to students. Also, these for-profit colleges aren’t always the most honest ones. Several former and current students are starting to bring class action law suits against some of the colleges for the misrepresentation of job placement. One student is suing due to landing a job in retail after piling up $80,000 in student debt.