A Cronkite News story headline screams, “Arizona posts lowest college completion rate, highest default rate.” An Associated Press headline is equally dire: “Report: Arizona tied for lowest college graduation rates nationwide.” To give Cronkite News its due, after its headline grabs you with its partial truth, the article does a good job of breaking down the overall completion rate to show that our public universities graduate a higher percentage than the national average. The very short AP article, after listing the Arizona four year college completion rate at 29 percent, ends by saying “Education Secretary Arne Duncan said graduation rates are especially low, and default rates are especially high when it comes to for-profit schools.” What does that sentence mean exactly? It doesn’t say, no further explanation. Oh, and AP says the 29 percent figure represents students who graduate in four years. Wrong. It’s the percentage of students who graduate within six years. Oops.
So let’s go to the U.S. Department of Education report fact sheet that both articles draw their figures from and see how it breaks down college graduation and college loan default rates. Colleges are separated into three categories: Public, Private and For-profit. (Since it doesn’t specify, I have to assume that “Private” means nonprofit, since “For-profit” colleges are also private, by definition.) Arizona’s 29 percent, six-year graduation rate lumps all three types of colleges together, putting us at the bottom of the heap alongside Alaska. Looks like bad news for Arizona. But when we look at the public college graduation rate separately, it’s 57 percent, just above the national average of 55 percent. Meanwhile, Arizona’s for-profit college graduation rate is 23 percent, well below the 32 percent national average. You can attribute much of that rate to University of Phoenix, which has students from all over the country, yet all of them count here because they’re attending an “Arizona college.” The abysmal graduation rate of University of Phoenix’s 213,000 students drags our numbers way, way down.
Then there’s the student loan default rate. Arizona’s is the highest in the nation at 18 percent. But not so fast. Our public college default rate is 9 percent, the national average for public colleges. Our for-profit default rate is 19 percent. That happens to be the national for-profit average, but since University of Phoenix is the largest for-profit college in the nation, its default rate has a larger-than-normal impact on Arizona’s overall rate.
We have plenty to criticize about our public education system here in Arizona, but let’s not criticize our public universities’ graduation and student loan default rates by mixing them in with the results from Huckster U University of Phoenix.
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.
Bravo David Safier! Great journalism and clarifying the facts that Cronkite News really messed up.
Then in reality our public education colleges do a very good job and a much better job of the for profit colleges. So why are we cutting public education dollars exactly? Our state has become a poster child in reality for ‘for profit’ education failure.
For-profit colleges are a racket. Buyer beware.
Education for profit anywhere is a racket. The children/students cease to be the priority and the profit is the focus.
Why does it work so well in medicine? Are you advocating that government seize all for profit ventures?
I personally do not believe medicine should be for profit either Dan Hyde. Drug companies have used their power to make drugs expensive so the profit is great. Many drugs are much cheaper in other countries who have socialized medicine. Doctors have been found diagnosing problems that have not existed because of the profits. For profit hos I also know that people who are wealthy get much better healthcare and are able to have access to more sophisticated treatments. For profit hospitals do pad bills. There are many links that support these statements. So I could go on … Education and healthcare should not be for profit. I do not know what criteria you are using to make that statement that it works so well. For profit businesses should only be for areas that are not essential to a healthy, productive life . For profit IMHO creates and sets up scenarios where greed can produce results that are life threatening and/ or do not enable people to prosper as in not having access to a good education.
So in essence you trust the government not to have “greed” problems? Aren’t they human also? Ever try to sue the government?
Stop the idiotic right-wing Reaganesque rant against “government.” The records are clear. Big Pharm, hospitals, and insurance companies are price-fixing. “Free market” myths are ridiculous. You maximize profit, not quality. If it were to take over education, there’d be an even bigger mess. “Expensive” education for the wealthy, lousy education for the lower-middle class.
A popsicle-stick splint on a finger just cost my brother’s insurance company 650 dollars, and we ALL pay for that. Government intervention would fix it, but reps are bought and paid for by the above-mentioned entities. Guardian(s) is right. I can cross the border and get BETTER care for 1/20 the price.
Dan Hyde, let’s just talk about healthcare and education( Big government is slang for let’s just dump everything there and not name where the waste is).
For profit education has not been a savings because of all the fraud, and the services provided are minimal at best for any diverse situation. THe scores are about the same or lower as regular public schools with a few exceptions. THere are some parents who are happy with charter schools but have gone back to public schools because the charter either did not know how to help children who have unique needs( gifted or autism or any special needs) or because the expectations were unreasonable and not for all children. In addition, the latest complaint I have heard about charters is that parents are tired of having fundraisers all the time and they(Charter schools) complain that they don’t have enough money. Remember Dan, charter schools are suppose to be run more cheaply than regular public schools.They are now complaining the expectations for charters are too high(When they are asked to do what they say they can more cheaply). Regular public schools are accountable to everyone, furnish budgets and anyone can ask for more information about each program. Regular public schools are a great deal. All the complaints about government and I have yet to see facts and examples that are real or haven’t been mistakes. Privatization of education IMHO was always about business being angry that there were areas they couldn’t make money and so they trash(ed) public schools. Charters need accountability.
Medicare is run very well as well as SS. Don’t believe everything you read. Investigate . Since I am in my ‘golden years’ I have experienced these programs and am very happy and do not know anyone who is not. I keep waiting for the ball to drop and it has not. I am not saying the government doesn’t make mistakes, and will again. However, no one follows the private sector in education well and I doubt in medicine. There are some like David Safier who do investigative writing but in general not a lot of accountability. I don’t know why you think privatization in medicine is so great. I don’t at all. Medicare and SS are much easier and no fraud that I have seen.
“public education is accountable to everyone?”
Let me introduce you to TUSD. Your opinion will never fly here.
And when we watch government try to operate any venture, like Medicare you do realize that they have privatized it to save money.
They are also bankrupting SS with their theft of taxes and spending on other pet projects.
How have you developed those views? Everybody is living the proof.
David, every time I read you what comes across is that you are “of the teacher’s unions, for the teacher’s union and by the teacher’s unions.” That is my first point.
My second point is that you see everything in black and white terms, which I find fantastic and unreal.
Contrary to your representations, I believe, based only on what I read hear and in the Star that: 1) The folks at TUSD are frankly corrupt: 2) the teacher’s unions are doing their best to protect their vested self interests (compensation, work rules and,–especially–unsustainable pensions), …the interests of the children are long forgotten; and. 3 The TUSD system is failing because people who can are voting with their feet and moving elsewhere. Thus, your world view is a fantasy based on wishful thinking rather than reality.
Yes, many if not most for profit education efforts are a scam. We agree on that. However, there would be no market for them if the public education options were competent, honest and effective. The public efforts at TUSD are a shameful exercise of nepotism, corruption and ineptitude. Sorry, that’s what it is.
It’s not a black and white thing (as much as you want to define it in those terms). It is all gray.
Would you please deal with reality and stop being a spin doctor for TUSD, public education and the teacher’s unions? You really do have a following I think. If you were to get over your ideology and deal with facts you could really contribute to progress.
Respectfully,
Mike
Well said Mike. I have tried in vain.