SL 739

~ Laura

Why do for-profits continue to attract students, when there’s been so much press attention on their shabby practices, and there are perfectly good community colleges down the road? That was my question yesterday. Matt Reed at Inside Higher Ed gave the answer.

12 Young People on Why They Probably Won’t Vote.

I have never been one for table decorating. I set up a buffet with a stack of dishes and cutlery for dinner parties. But this story makes me want to do funky things with my table.

Published by Laura

12 thoughts on “SL 739”

  1. O my gosh, place settings are my life. In contrast, if my wife had her way, she would serve every meal in the manner Laura uses. If Caitlin Flanagan met us, her gender-essentialist head would explode.
    That said, we don’t really do anything special for Thanksgiving or Christmas: just the same high-end damask and crystal we use two or three other times a year for dinner parties. My mother, who felt as I do, had special Christmas china and special Thanksgiving table decorations, but we don’t.

    Like

    1. In fact, my mother went further, and in her later years, she and my father ate with damask napkins every night. She confessed to me: “Don’t tell your father; we’re spending $14 a day on laundering napkins.”

      Like

  2. I like tables to have the food on them (and family style meals, rather than buffets or plating). It gets unwieldy when there are too many people at the table, but, having multiple servings work. I really dislike decorations that interfere with the food, eating, and talk. A number of the tables shown in the article violate my personal rules (high candles, flower arrangements that restrict your vision). Those tables seem designed for banquets and fundraisers where you don’t talk to the people around you but hear lectures from someone else.

    Like

    1. We had a round table we got from a closed Chinese restaurant, and the lazy susan in the middle. I liked that arrangement very much. Somehow it didn’t please my wife, and it is gone now. So, very utilitarian and not much glam.

      Like

  3. I work with a bunch graduates of for profits and asked them why they chose their schools. Class schedule was the number one answer. Evening and weekend classes. Now they did attend community college for a few years but there are few 4 year colleges that make it easy to get a Bachelor’s degree part time.

    Like

    1. I wonder what kind of jobs they can get, unless they are in nursing or something else where there is an exam, not administered by the college, to validate.

      Like

      1. I think it depends on a number of factors. In the case of the people at my institution, they were already working full time in lower level operations jobs and used their accounting degrees to move into better paying positions. In another case (a coworker’s son) he enrolled in a programming degree at a for profit after checking with the companies that the school claimed hired graduates that in fact they did. He met his wife in the program and they both now work for small software companies. (Not in Silicon Valley) So the landscape is complicated.

        Like

      2. I know there are well-regarded programming boot camps, but I don’t know how to tell them from the others.

        Like

  4. About community colleges: I did a quick search on College Scorecard, entering my state for the location, and choosing either “private for-profit” or searching for “community” + “public.”

    At least in my state, the few for-profit colleges have much higher graduation rates. For profit: 31%. Community colleges: 18%. College Scorecard reports the info for students who took out federal loans, so some students’ data is not included. For example, according to College Navigator, the mortuary college has a 100% graduation rate. However, it seems none (or most) of the students take out federal loans, or they are not entering post secondary education for the first time, so College Search does not list the graduation rate.

    The for-profit colleges are more likely to be narrowly focused. In my quick survey, I did not see any that offered liberal arts. Health services or business programs are more likely to be offered. (As a side note curiosity about the Mortuary College has added “The Undertaking:” and “The American Way of Death” to my reading list. https://www.economist.com/international/2018/04/12/why-undertakers-are-worried)

    Maybe word of mouth is a partial explanation? People who do not succeed at community college may be likely to blame the college. So 82% of their former students are not likely to recommend them; compare that to 69% of the former students of for-profit colleges.

    Like

  6. I’ve just started to scratch the surface of my research on for-profit colleges and I’m surprised how many are better than I thought. They are getting kids jobs.

    And that CNBC article is spot on. Things are change rapidly. Very rapidly. This is all that I’m doing right now.

    Like

Comments are closed.