September/October 2010 Issue

You Know Your College Is Ripping You Off If…

How for-profit schools take students for suckers.

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Read also: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

The for-profit education industry—think University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, and schools owned by Kaplan—is booming. Enrollment at these institutions is growing 5 to 10 times faster than in all of higher ed combined. But with that growth has come an onslaught of criticism (PDF) for hard-sell recruiting tactics (PDF), risky loans, and inflated degrees. Here are three warning signs that your for-profit college may be cheating you out of your money—and an education.

Warning Sign #1: You were recruited at a blackjack table or soup kitchen. For-profit colleges spend huge amounts advertising at bus stops and online, but recruiters also visit (PDF) homeless shelters and casinos, where they often exaggerate their school’s rigorous academics and job-placement success rates.

You know your college is ripping you off if...

Warning Sign #2: You’ll be paying off your student debt well into your golden years. The average debt for a for-profit grad is $32,650, among the highest in all of higher ed. More than 90 percent of for-profit students borrow money, versus 70 percent at private schools and 50 percent at public universities. Several for-profits have been accused (PDF) of saddling (PDF) students with high-interest loans and other onerous terms.

Warning Sign #3: Every time you make a new friend at school, he disappears. Only one-third of for-profit students will have graduated (PDF) six years after they enrolled, compared to 55 percent at public schools and 65 percent at private colleges. Part of the problem is misleading information about a degree’s total cost, or disappointment at the quality of the education received.

Illustration: John Hersey

Also read: The rest of the 2010 MoJo Mini College Guide, plus the 2009 MoJo Mini College Guide.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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