In a world where prestigious private schools are amassing huge endowments, I think the "for profit" versus "private" distinction is a thin one. For profit schools fail not because of their corporate structure, but because their lack of prestige and reputation limits them to catering mainly to a student body that is marginal to begin with.
If Harvard, Stanford, etc., converted to corporations and started paying dividends out of its giant endowment, I doubt the best students would suddenly start turning down their offers.
There is a huge distinction -- endowments provide stability to non-profit universities and ensure that they will be able to benefit future generations, not to provide value to shareholders.
I fail to see how comparing a top 5 university in the world with regular education.
This is talking about ALL ages. "Knowledge Universe businesses included early-childhood learning centers, for-profit K–12 schools, online M.B.A. programs, IT-training services for working professionals, and more."
With investment being made with these ideas a $500 Billion dollar industry, "In 2012, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein established the Amplify division within News Corp. At the time of his initial investment, Murdoch described K–12 education as “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” " They sold after losing a billion dollars to Steve Job's widow.
If private schools converted to corporations they would not have multi-billion dollar endowments available to fund all of the things they do that make them so prestigious. That money would have to be returned to shareholders as profit.
Parenthetical remark: Harvard is already a corporation, in fact, America's first. "The net result of that research is the conclusion that the Corporation of Harvard College is indeed America’s first corporation". See https://www.buybooksontheweb.com/peek.aspx?id=4221
The endowments were created by the cumulative donations of alumni, largely with the intention of keeping monetary influence out of the university. If you remove that connection, you'll eventually kill the goose that laid the golden eggs, as a for-profit institution inevitably embraces the values of the agora rather than the acadame.
In other words, people gave money because they felt these universities can educate more freely when money isn't a factor. When they no longer feel that way, there will be no more donations.
> 'If Harvard, Stanford, etc., converted to corporations'...
let's acknowledge that this is a completely absurd notion.
but for fun, let's say it did happen: this would be the end of harvard's good reputation, i guarantee it.
- faculty protests
- widespread shut-the-campus-down student protests, no doubt
- alumni uproar like no other
- kiss donations goodbye -- nobody ever donated a million dollars to Univ of Phoenix or General Assembly...
- research funding elibility in limbo at the very least
- research coming out of the institution would no longer be taken seriously (i sure wouldn't)
- etc
i would never send my children to a for-profit institute that, by definition, did not have interests aligned with my family's or society's, and i'm sure many others wouldn't either. it is not about reputation. i would rather they go to the tiniest po-dunk state college than attend a for-profit of any kind.
Their idea was to overturn the way children were taught in public schools by integrating technology into the classroom. Although inspirational, the idea entailed competing with a series of multibillion-dollar global leaders in educational hardware, software, and curriculum development.
They've been peddling technology in the classroom as a panacea for as long as I can remember without much impact. What did they really think billions of dollars of technology was going to change?
And their strategies have been very shallow: many upper middle class school districts went and purchased tablets and iPads for every student - but no software for them to use. Often the "technology" taught is more of a lesson to the teachers than the students - who have been playing with parents phones since birth... I consulted with a few of these education startups over the years, and not a single one I encountered felt like anything other than an investor scam.
By all means give kids a taste of how computers actually work, but breaking down problems into small parts, that kind of critical thinking, is useful not just in programming, but as a foundational life skill.
Bringing tablets into the classroom is one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard. Those are products. You don't learn technology, at all, by using products. You learn about a thing by deconstructing and constructing.
"Advocates of for-profit education often understandably emphasize the role that market forces play in improving quality and efficiency."
Is there any significant evidence that for-profit educational institutions have improved either quality or efficiency (whatever that means in the case)?
"But the most constructive role the for-profit segment may play is in providing a unique level of stability to the educational ecosystem when (and only when) it establishes sustainable business models."
Considering that the rest of the article ia about the instability of the for-profit segment, this seems to be wishful thinking.
It fails (in K-12) because it misidentifies the problems. A school filled with iPads cannot solve:
- poor nutrition
- a home or neighborhood situation wracked with neglect, abuse, or addiction and the associated stress and anxiety that goes along with them
- impoverished relatives that are forced to move frequently for new, low-paying jobs
- general situational instability and lack of access to money
The school's money could fix the underpaid teacher/poor facilities problem (but that only helps in cases where students can afford the schools in the first place, obviously.) In our system, we use phrases like "problems with K-12 education" as a laughable shorthand for "enormous societal problems we're not even trying to tackle in a serious way because they would require lots of work, taxation, redistribution, and government 'intrusion'." The people starting these schools would never have done so if they'd realized this; there is no silver bullet for the problem. It requires major systemic changes (and many of these things apply just as much to higher ed as well.)
There is a big difference between a for-profit school, like the University of Phoenix, and for-profit companies in the education space which work with all types of schools as vendors or sell directly to students.
LeapFrog in the first paragraph is a for-profit company in the education sector not a school - Leapfrog makes things like software that teaches young kids to read and tablets that have education-related games on them.
This is a ridiculous article, especially coming from the "co-director of the media-and-technology program" at Columbia Business School.
It does not really answer "Why?" nor is it clear the author knows what "for-profit education" means.
Further, for-profit education of any definition doesn't appear to have some huge failure rate above other types of startup businesses or a specific reason why failure occurs when it does. And the article completely brushes over success stories. I used Kaplan recently; it is for profit, worth billions and is an 80 year old company, and I had a positive experience as a customer.
For-profit schools, like for-profit health care, like for profit military work, is a debate worth having. But this article, which basically says "in education don't try to do big things - a few rich guys have failed trying that", is not helping anyone.
Build an education-related business however you want, big or small. Education is full of problems needing fixing and there is no reason the solutions can't come from more for-profit companies that just don't suck at it.
The role of a school is to produce good students, who 20 years down the road would be happy about their education.
The role of a company is to satisfy clients enough to see them returning. Here the clients are parents, and the target is that they return next year.
Free-market can work in the direction of human progress but a lot of people miss the fact that incentives have to be designed for this to happen, they don't just magically appear.
Well it's hard to compete with nonprofits that don't pay taxes. Non profits compete with government. In fact non profit education outfits do pretty well against public schools.
I think the biggest problem with attempts to "revolutionize" US education is that nobody has identified an actual problem it has. US public schools actually get pretty damn good results by worldwide standards.
> US public schools actually get pretty damn good results by worldwide standards.
This is in spite of the system, instead of because of it. Some people were going to do well regardless - because they were well-nourished as children, grew up in stable homes, etc. Most the rest are good worker-bees, or good candidates for filling the prisons (a make-work program).
> I think the biggest problem with attempts to "revolutionize" US education is that nobody has identified an actual problem it has.
I think John Gatto [1] pointed out that "Nothing of value to the individual happens by force" - maybe the quote is in one of his books. Gatto's essay on retiring, "I Quit, I Think" [2], precisely describes professional teachers' dilemma.
The point is that we could do it better. We could have a better environment for both students and teachers.
Technology has helped in the past, after all. Computers for test-grading, for example, from scan-trons back in the 1980's to software that can give a math test and automatically score them. Overhead projectors, smartboards, and so on. None of these are absolutely necessary, but helpful.
Problems? It is pretty easy to spot problems: The scores inside the us are vastly different in different areas, for example. Stress levels both for students and teachers. Funding is poor in places.
I find it interesting that the US produces world class universities (Caltech, MIT, Stanford), and the proof is that (good) international students are dying to get in, while elementary schools average around 25th in the world
I assume there are a large number of private schools in the US that are for-profit and doing well. The key is scale and the desire to change the education system. I don't fault the startups for aligning with top colleges. The big names bring credibility. I imagine it's difficult to compete in the primary education market with a product that's free (Government Schools).
In the primary and secondary education markets in the US, most for-profits are fully or partially funded by the local government as replacements for government-owned schools.
Often this is done with some flavor of a voucher system, where students within the school district can attend any school in the district (public or private). In other cases, the district will hire a for-profit school to run a magnet school. The whole system is often corrupt, with the for-profit school being audited by a company that shares common investors.
[+] [-] rayiner|9 years ago|reply
If Harvard, Stanford, etc., converted to corporations and started paying dividends out of its giant endowment, I doubt the best students would suddenly start turning down their offers.
[+] [-] rusty122|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|9 years ago|reply
This is talking about ALL ages. "Knowledge Universe businesses included early-childhood learning centers, for-profit K–12 schools, online M.B.A. programs, IT-training services for working professionals, and more."
With investment being made with these ideas a $500 Billion dollar industry, "In 2012, the media mogul Rupert Murdoch and the former New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein established the Amplify division within News Corp. At the time of his initial investment, Murdoch described K–12 education as “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.” " They sold after losing a billion dollars to Steve Job's widow.
[+] [-] imgabe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] williamstein|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notfromhere|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] s_q_b|9 years ago|reply
In other words, people gave money because they felt these universities can educate more freely when money isn't a factor. When they no longer feel that way, there will be no more donations.
[+] [-] thefastlane|9 years ago|reply
let's acknowledge that this is a completely absurd notion.
but for fun, let's say it did happen: this would be the end of harvard's good reputation, i guarantee it.
- faculty protests
- widespread shut-the-campus-down student protests, no doubt
- alumni uproar like no other
- kiss donations goodbye -- nobody ever donated a million dollars to Univ of Phoenix or General Assembly...
- research funding elibility in limbo at the very least
- research coming out of the institution would no longer be taken seriously (i sure wouldn't)
- etc
i would never send my children to a for-profit institute that, by definition, did not have interests aligned with my family's or society's, and i'm sure many others wouldn't either. it is not about reputation. i would rather they go to the tiniest po-dunk state college than attend a for-profit of any kind.
[+] [-] yuhong|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] st3v3r|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsprogrammer|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelos|9 years ago|reply
They've been peddling technology in the classroom as a panacea for as long as I can remember without much impact. What did they really think billions of dollars of technology was going to change?
[+] [-] bsenftner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cmurf|9 years ago|reply
Bringing tablets into the classroom is one of the dumbest things I'd ever heard. Those are products. You don't learn technology, at all, by using products. You learn about a thing by deconstructing and constructing.
[+] [-] mcguire|9 years ago|reply
Is there any significant evidence that for-profit educational institutions have improved either quality or efficiency (whatever that means in the case)?
"But the most constructive role the for-profit segment may play is in providing a unique level of stability to the educational ecosystem when (and only when) it establishes sustainable business models."
Considering that the rest of the article ia about the instability of the for-profit segment, this seems to be wishful thinking.
[+] [-] Futurebot|9 years ago|reply
- poor nutrition
- a home or neighborhood situation wracked with neglect, abuse, or addiction and the associated stress and anxiety that goes along with them
- impoverished relatives that are forced to move frequently for new, low-paying jobs
- general situational instability and lack of access to money
The school's money could fix the underpaid teacher/poor facilities problem (but that only helps in cases where students can afford the schools in the first place, obviously.) In our system, we use phrases like "problems with K-12 education" as a laughable shorthand for "enormous societal problems we're not even trying to tackle in a serious way because they would require lots of work, taxation, redistribution, and government 'intrusion'." The people starting these schools would never have done so if they'd realized this; there is no silver bullet for the problem. It requires major systemic changes (and many of these things apply just as much to higher ed as well.)
[+] [-] qwrusz|9 years ago|reply
LeapFrog in the first paragraph is a for-profit company in the education sector not a school - Leapfrog makes things like software that teaches young kids to read and tablets that have education-related games on them.
This is a ridiculous article, especially coming from the "co-director of the media-and-technology program" at Columbia Business School.
It does not really answer "Why?" nor is it clear the author knows what "for-profit education" means.
Further, for-profit education of any definition doesn't appear to have some huge failure rate above other types of startup businesses or a specific reason why failure occurs when it does. And the article completely brushes over success stories. I used Kaplan recently; it is for profit, worth billions and is an 80 year old company, and I had a positive experience as a customer.
For-profit schools, like for-profit health care, like for profit military work, is a debate worth having. But this article, which basically says "in education don't try to do big things - a few rich guys have failed trying that", is not helping anyone.
Build an education-related business however you want, big or small. Education is full of problems needing fixing and there is no reason the solutions can't come from more for-profit companies that just don't suck at it.
[+] [-] Iv|9 years ago|reply
The role of a company is to satisfy clients enough to see them returning. Here the clients are parents, and the target is that they return next year.
Free-market can work in the direction of human progress but a lot of people miss the fact that incentives have to be designed for this to happen, they don't just magically appear.
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naveen99|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bandrami|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teslabox|9 years ago|reply
This is in spite of the system, instead of because of it. Some people were going to do well regardless - because they were well-nourished as children, grew up in stable homes, etc. Most the rest are good worker-bees, or good candidates for filling the prisons (a make-work program).
> I think the biggest problem with attempts to "revolutionize" US education is that nobody has identified an actual problem it has.
I think John Gatto [1] pointed out that "Nothing of value to the individual happens by force" - maybe the quote is in one of his books. Gatto's essay on retiring, "I Quit, I Think" [2], precisely describes professional teachers' dilemma.
[1] http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20100309061700/http://www.johnta...
[+] [-] Broken_Hippo|9 years ago|reply
Technology has helped in the past, after all. Computers for test-grading, for example, from scan-trons back in the 1980's to software that can give a math test and automatically score them. Overhead projectors, smartboards, and so on. None of these are absolutely necessary, but helpful.
Problems? It is pretty easy to spot problems: The scores inside the us are vastly different in different areas, for example. Stress levels both for students and teachers. Funding is poor in places.
Then there is this kid speaking about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnsejGj4JSg
[+] [-] nixos|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mgamache|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|9 years ago|reply
They don't have investor and the endowments are not used to pay dividends.
Private doesn't mean for profit, and non for profit doesn't mean they can't make money it's what the money is used for that defines them.
[+] [-] alistairSH|9 years ago|reply
Often this is done with some flavor of a voucher system, where students within the school district can attend any school in the district (public or private). In other cases, the district will hire a for-profit school to run a magnet school. The whole system is often corrupt, with the for-profit school being audited by a company that shares common investors.