Education for profit

Public Interest, Summer, 2003 by David L. Kirp

DeVry makes no bones about being a technical school; would-be sociologists and philosophers are advised to go elsewhere. However, a full third of the required courses at DeVry are "general education" classes, including courses in economics, political science, English, and communications. During their final year, the students are also required to take a class on "social issues and technology," which is taught jointly by faculty from the two disciplines. Persuading students that such classes are worthwhile is a constant struggle, but this is one instance in which the consumer doesn't rule.

The general education requirements are necessary to satisfy the rules of the accrediting agency. Accreditation is important not because it brings cachet--unlike traditional colleges, DeVry isn't fixated on the U.S. News & World Report rankings, which its prospective students rarely consult--but because it enables DeVry students to participate in federal loan programs. More than 80 percent of the students take out loans, and some also borrow money from the school.

Does the public profit?

The core complaint leveled against schools like DeVry and Phoenix is that they are operated as businesses that emphasize profits at the expense of learning. "Just how much profit do you make off the backs of your students?" the president of another college asked his counterpart from the University of Phoenix, which was then seeking permission to open a campus in Newark, New Jersey. The New Jersey accrediting agency initially denied Phoenix's bid--the fact that the school had no library was one of the things that troubled them--but the university revised its plan in response to the accreditors' concerns and was ultimately approved.

The quarrel over a library is part of a deeper argument about the character of higher education. While to academics libraries are sacred places, the Phoenix administrators contended that access to a nearby library was sufficient, since almost everything their students need is either in their textbooks, online, or else embedded in experience, not books.

Implicit in much of the criticism of for-profit schools is the belief that a university should traffic in ideas rather than know-how. "Here was a university formed around the idea that practical experience is superior to abstract understanding," the New Yorker's James Traub wrote in his account of the University of Phoenix, "[and that] proposition almost seemed self-negating."

Yet it's not clear that many traditional universities are nowadays all that much different from DeVry and Phoenix. A liberal arts education is increasingly regarded as a luxury, one that carries cachet for a shrinking clientele. The proportion of liberal arts majors has dramatically declined as undergraduates have shifted their allegiance to the "practical arts" of business administration, recreation management, and law enforcement. Such courses are much the same whether offered at community colleges, regional state universities, or DeVry campuses. Indeed, DeVry's "satisfy-the-customer" philosophy may mean that its students actually get better instruction.