In The News Today: 05/03/10

Albert Gray of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools offers his opinion in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the Department of Education's upcoming rules regarding gainful employment:

some high-cost, high-tuition programs offered by career colleges, like culinary arts or cosmetology, will face closure unless the salaries and wages for those legitimate and high-demand occupations are substantially increased—a function of economic conditions that are out of the institutions' control. The hospitality and aesthetics industries will confront even more profound shortages of qualified workers than exist today.

Accreditors review and measure student retention and placement, and maintain quantitative and qualitative standards on measurement of satisfactory academic process, student learning, and student and employer satisfaction. By adjusting the frequency, specificity, and depth of job-placement data required of member institutions, accreditors will have an enhanced ability to develop models of best practices and share—or ultimately require—their application.

and incentive compensation

Most objections to incentive compensation for admissions representatives are rooted in recruitment abuses by a small number of marginal institutions more than 20 years ago.

Completely eliminating a reward system that is tied to effective student enrollment could reduce the number of potential students who are attracted to, and ultimately enroll in, programs that will improve the quality of their lives.Reward structures in a variety of industries are moving toward such incentives, and many people in the education sector believe that demonstrates a best practice in student recruitment and retention.

What the Education Department and sector-based negotiators failed to recognize is that the emphasis on outcomes does not end with recruitment

Adam Sichko indicates that gainful employment is a threat to the health care profession:

a federal proposal tying college borrowing to future earnings will jeopardize high-demand nursing, medical assisting and information technology programs.

medical assisting, criminal justice and business programs have the highest student demand because they lead to jobs after graduation. Placement in those programs is around 90 percent, he said.

With an annual tuition of $7,335, Gutierrez said, it could limit borrowing for students enrolling in the medical assisting program since the starting salary in that field is roughly $24,000 a year. “It could force schools to either lower the cost or get rid of some programs"

I've commented on the implications of gainful employment many times on this blog. I also wrote an article for Career College Central awhile back discussing the Department of Education's NegReg process that you can read here.

Must Reads

New GAO report identifies:

seven for-profits, seven nonprofit privates and one nonprofit public institution were found to have violated the ban

on incentive-based compensation between 2002 and December 2009. I've written in opposition to the ban on incentive-based pay in an article for Career College Central. Career College Association President Harris Miller was quoted in an Inside Higher Ed story as saying that the violations:

"involve institutions of all types," even though accusations against for-profit institutions have garnered the most headlines about incentive compensation.

Neal McCluskey of the Cato Institute on why we should abolish the Department of Education:

many Americans - who are generally too busy with other things to cogitate over why government fails - truly equate federal politicians interfering in education with improving education. But as decades of academic stagnation and belt-busting budgets have proven, that's just not the case.