⋙ Download Lower Ed The Troubling Rise of ForProfit Colleges in the New Economy Tressie McMillan Cottom 9781620970607 Books

Lower Ed The Troubling Rise of ForProfit Colleges in the New Economy Tressie McMillan Cottom 9781620970607 Books

Download As PDF : Lower Ed The Troubling Rise of ForProfit Colleges in the New Economy Tressie McMillan Cottom 9781620970607 Books

Lower Ed The Troubling Rise of ForProfit Colleges in the New Economy Tressie McMillan Cottom 9781620970607 Books

I have taught for 16 years in several local community colleges as an adjunct. Because I am paid only for my in-class hours, and not for any grading or prep time, to make ends meet I have also taught part time at several for profit 'colleges' where poor mostly non white students are over represented.

I never understood why anyone would choose to pay 10x the cost for a 'class' lasting 4 weeks and covering little material instead of paying a much lower cost to take a real 16 week class at a community college. And at the community college I have real academic freedom to create the entire semester on Blackboard, adding extra materials, determining all assignments, tests, etc. At the for-profit college, there is ZERO academic freedom to create the courses! And those who do design them appear to lack the experience of being a programmer that I have (1989 - 2017)...they are merely academics pretending to know this field.

Even when teaching MATH at the for profit 'colleges', with my B.S., M.A. and high school teaching credential in math,I am not allowed to create the course shell or decide the assignments, assessments or even the discussions. It is truly a waste of a degree when they ask me to teach their 'classes'. Meanwhile the school takes the students' financial aid and VA benefits DIRECTLY instead of the students receiving them and paying the school. This is truly a scam.


Tags : Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy [Tressie McMillan Cottom] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <div><BR><B>“The best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students.” —<I>The New York Times Book Review </I> As seen on <em>The Daily Show</em>,Tressie McMillan Cottom,Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy,The New Press,1620970600,Educational Policy & Reform - General,Higher,Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects,Education, Higher - Economic aspects - United States,Education, Higher;Economic aspects;United States.,For-profit colleges and universities;United States.,For-profit universities and colleges - United States,For-profit universities and colleges;United States.,EDUCATION Educational Policy & Reform General,EDUCATION Higher,EDUCATION Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects,Education,Education Teaching,EducationEducational Policy & Reform,EducationFinance,EducationPhilosophy, Theory & Social Aspects,Education; college; higher education; for-profit colleges; for-profit schools; privatization; economics; sociology; University of Phoenix; ITT Tech; Corinthian; community college; veterans; fraud,Education; college; higher education; for-profit colleges; for-profit schools; privatization; economics; sociology; University of Phoenix; ITT Tech; Corinthian; community college; veterans; fraud;,Educational Policy,Educational Policy & Reform,Philosophy & theory of education,Philosophy Of Higher Education,EDUCATION Philosophy, Theory & Social Aspects,EducationEducational Policy & Reform,EducationFinance,EducationPhilosophy, Theory & Social Aspects,Educational Policy & Reform,Education Teaching,Educational Policy,Philosophy Of Higher Education,Education,Philosophy & theory of education

Lower Ed The Troubling Rise of ForProfit Colleges in the New Economy Tressie McMillan Cottom 9781620970607 Books Reviews

This excellent book is written by a top-notch academic, sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom, who went to the trouble to make the book interesting and engaging with lots of personal stories, including stories fro her own experience doing recruitment for two for-profit schools. Why would people pay so much more for a for-profit college whose degree is worth less in prestige? There are real answers that are partly because many of the schools are predatory but also because they meet people's real needs that are not being met by other colleges. And the whole educational system has bought into a logic that puts all the risk for advancement into or even maintenance of economic security on individuals' getting more credentials, not on employer training or experience-based career paths. I've been recommending this book to everyone I know who works in higher education, and I also recommend it to everyone else who wants a good critical understanding of what is wrong with higher education today as well as why for-profit schools are doing so well and why most consumers should try to stay away from them if they can.
I gave away my first copy of this book more or less immediately after I finished reading it, so urgently did I think another colleague needed it. I bought a replacement, then ordered eight copies for my entire cohort of first-year experience students at Boston University, when it turned out they didn't really know about for-profit education. I've recommended it to teachers and lawyers and bankers and I recommend it to you.
Here's a topic we need to be concerned about. Why people want or need to go to college, what kind of knowledge do they seek, and what outcome are questions many students may not ask with any care. The for-profit model has different goals from the traditional non-profit, and while we may find qualities to like or dislike in either, the leap of faith undertaken by students in the for-profit motivation should worry us. Cheers to Tressie McMillan Cottom for wading into the topic and making facts available to students and their families. Give it to a friend whose son or daughter is considering one of these schools, and learn the difference so you know where your money is going.A Child's Book of Shadows
Prof. Cottom is one of the nation's foremost sociologists of higher education, and her first solo authored book is an incredible combination of scholarship and storytelling. Before her doctoral work, Cottom worked as an "enrollment counselor" in two for-profit higher education institutions with different sectors and clientele. With a keen eye for details and human relationships (and an extensive LiveJournal blog to help job her memory), Cottom describes her front line work enrolling students in Beauty College and Technical College, and the mythology of educational salvation that had her and her colleagues convinced that encouraging low-income, minority students to take on massive debts with their families to pursue degrees with questionable labor market value was an unquestionable social good. This front row seat to the student enrollment experience is complimented by later fieldwork from her doctoral work with a diverse set of sources SEC filings from university holding companies, interviews with woman seeking doctoral degrees from for-profit universities, and her own exercises in enrolling in these universities. Both her stories and her more technical analyses are compelling, and her ease at moving back and forth between the two is one of the remarkable characteristics of her writing.

Cottom's thesis is that the driving forces behind the rise of for-profit, financialized Lower Ed are persistent social inequality combined with a shift in risk from institutions to individuals, most prominently here a shift in responsibilities for job training from employers and government to individual students and employees. This shift is partially masked by a collective myth-making about higher education as a source of the collective good, allowing for-profit conglomerates to ride the moral coattails of elite universities elite Ed's explanations about why they don't need to distribute their enormous endowments or get taxed justify Lower Ed's expansion and growth to serve non-traditional students. But the conditions for Lower Ed to rise required a bipartisan faith in markets as the rational mechanism for distributing educational credentials, rather than a collective responsibility to use policy to support full employment and public funding of higher education. As carefully as Cottom describes the stories of individual actors, the real intellectual accomplishment is interpreting their actions as parts of larger systems.

Cottom refuses to blame the poor judgment of students or the evil hearts of college enrollment managers, but insists that we see the society that we all build and share as responsible for the social inequalities that produce Lower Ed.
I have taught for 16 years in several local community colleges as an adjunct. Because I am paid only for my in-class hours, and not for any grading or prep time, to make ends meet I have also taught part time at several for profit 'colleges' where poor mostly non white students are over represented.

I never understood why anyone would choose to pay 10x the cost for a 'class' lasting 4 weeks and covering little material instead of paying a much lower cost to take a real 16 week class at a community college. And at the community college I have real academic freedom to create the entire semester on Blackboard, adding extra materials, determining all assignments, tests, etc. At the for-profit college, there is ZERO academic freedom to create the courses! And those who do design them appear to lack the experience of being a programmer that I have (1989 - 2017)...they are merely academics pretending to know this field.

Even when teaching MATH at the for profit 'colleges', with my B.S., M.A. and high school teaching credential in math,I am not allowed to create the course shell or decide the assignments, assessments or even the discussions. It is truly a waste of a degree when they ask me to teach their 'classes'. Meanwhile the school takes the students' financial aid and VA benefits DIRECTLY instead of the students receiving them and paying the school. This is truly a scam.