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Friday, December 13, 2024

On the 8th Anniversary of the College Meltdown

We started this blog eight years ago, in 2016, to highlight rampant greed and corruption in US higher education, and to raise awareness of this system to students-consumers-workers and their families. Before that, we spent years in the ruthless higher ed business: seeing folks like ourselves struggling with underemployment, and juggling jobs, family obligations, and student loan debt.

On December 12, 2016, the College Meltdown blog (now known as the Higher Education Inquirer) was born. Our first article was "When college choice is a fraud." That article presented the argument that higher education for the working class was often a choice between predatory for-profit colleges and community colleges that were indifferent to their students.

While some things have changed on the higher education terrain, like the closing of some predatory for-profit schools, there is still a large degree of truth to the original premise. And much of the public has caught on: working class folks increasingly see college choice as a fraud. To worsen matters, college is increasingly considered a fraud by the middle-class, who see themselves and others underemployed and laden with debt. While a college mania for elite schools still exists, skepticism has turned to cynicism, with higher education in general.

Bright Spots

One positive change has been for the growth of College Promise programs. These programs, available in many states, have made community college more affordable by providing tuition free or at a low cost. College Promise programs have shored up community college enrollment. Community college enrollment began declining in 2010, but has shown some resilience as it also enrolls high school students for dual-enrollment.

More Cynicism Ahead

The rest of US higher education for the working class and much of the middle-class, is less promising. For-profit colleges faced increased scrutiny, and some closed down, but others morphed into state-owned robocolleges that were still of questionable value. Remaining for-profit colleges also rebounded as they closed physical campuses and became exclusively online.

While many state flagship universities continue to thrive, lesser know state universities have seen dramatic enrollment losses, even as they develop an online presence.

Online Program Managers, third-party vendors for universities, gained scrutiny in the 2020s, but ultimately there was little oversight. Even without oversight, OPMs began to fold because they were not offering the value they promised, even with degrees and certificates from elite universities like Harvard, Yale, and MIT.

Student loan debt has continued to rise, despite public outcries. But Republicans have blocked efforts for debt forgiveness in court, making college choice increasingly seen, and now known, as a bad bet by tens of millions of Americans.

In 2021, we changed our name to the Higher Education Inquirer to reflect a more objective stance. But the College Meltdown, as a social phenomenon, continues.

Monday, August 31, 2020

Student Loan Volumes Show College Meltdown Has Accelerated

US Student loan volumes decreased dramatically in the third quarter (March 31-June 30) of 2020.

According to Ken Miller at The Century Foundation, volumes decreased 10 percent at public colleges, 18 percent at for-profit colleges, and 20 percent at private non-profit colleges.

And according to Mark Kantrowitz, new student loan volumes were down 42 percent.

Student loan volumes were especially low at subprime schools University of Phoenix (-48%), Walden University (-48%), Ashford University (-56%), and Colorado Tech (-43%) and state flagship universities, University of Washington (-95%), Ohio State (-68%), Penn State (-51%), Temple University (-47%), and University of Texas-Austin (-41%).

Elite private universities Columbia University (-87%), Boston University (-55%) and Georgetown (-39%) also saw big losses in student loan volume.

While schools with large endowments will be able to cover these dramatic losses, those with less in alternative revenue streams and endowments will have to make tough decisions, in many cases cutting costs through layoffs in 2021.

Numbers for the 4th quarter, posted in November after the election, could be even worse, at least in absolute terms. The loss of these funds may not only hurt colleges and their employees, but also college towns. Federal student loan fiscal year numbers will also be reported in November.

In late December 2020, the National Student Clearinghouse will post national enrollment numbers which may parallel declining student loan volumes. The greatest income losses, however, may come from losses from room and board revenues.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

HEI Resources

[Updated January 8, 2023)

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Sunday, September 11, 2022

State Universities and the College Meltdown

State Universities are using Google Ads to boost enrollment numbers.

(Updated November 28, 2022)

While for-profit colleges, community colleges, and small private schools received the most attention in the first iteration of the College Meltdown, regional public universities (and a few flagship schools) have also experienced financial challenges, reorganizations, and mergers, enrollment losses, layoffs and resignations, off-campus learning site closings and campus dorm closings, lower graduation rates, and the necessity to lower admissions standards. They are not facing these downturns, though, without a fight.

State universities, for example, are attempting to maintain or boost their enrollment through marketing and advertising--sometimes with the assistance of helpful, yet sometimes questionable online program managers (OPMs) like 2U and Academic Partnerships and lead generators such as EducationDynamics.

Academic Partnerships claims to serve 50 university clients. HEI has identified 25 of them.

Google ads also follow consumers across the Web, with links to enrollment pages. And enrollment pages include cookies to learn about those who click onto the enrollment pages. Schools share the information that consumers provide with Google Analytics and Chartbeat.

A pop-up Google Ad for Penn State World Campus

Advanced marketing will not improve institutional quality directly but it may raise awareness of these state schools to targeted audiences. Whether this becomes predatory may be an issue worth examining.

In order to stay competitive, state universities have to have a strong online presence and spend an inordinate amount of money on marketing and advertising. Ohio University and other schools now offer programs that are 100 percent online.

State universities have joined for-profit colleges in the television advertising space.

Despite marketing and enrollment appeals like this, we believe the financial situation could worsen at non-flagship state universities when austerity is reemployed--something likely to happen during the next economic downturn.

While state flagship universities have multiple revenue streams, they are often unaffordable for working families. Elite state universities, also known as the Public Ivies, have increasingly shut out state residents--in favor of people from out of state and outside the US--who are willing to pay more in tuition.

Aaron Klein at the Brookings Institution calls this significant (and dysfunctional) out-of-state enrollment pattern as The Great Student Swap.

State Universities with more than 4000 foreign students include UC San Diego, University of Illinois, UC Irvine, University of Washington, Arizona State University, Purdue University, Ohio State University, Michigan State University, and UC Berkeley.

People fortunate enough to attend large state universities as undergrads may feel alienated by large and impersonal classrooms led by graduate assistants and other adjuncts. There are also significant and often under-addressed social problems related to larger universities, including hunger, substance abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, hazing and sexual assault.

Online only versions of flagship schools may not be of the same quality as their brick and mortar counterparts. Purdue University Global and University of Arizona Global Campus, for example, are open enrollment schools for working adults which produce questionable student outcomes. These "robocollege" schools hire few full-time instructors and often spend a great deal of their resources on marketing and advertising.

EducationDynamics is a lead generator for "robocolleges" such as Purdue University Global and University of Arizona, Global Campus.

Purdue University Global has used questionable marketing and advertising.

The Higher Education Inquirer has already noticed the following schools in the Summer and Fall 2022 that received media scrutiny for lower enrollment, financial problems, or labor issues:

Westfield State University

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities

Western Connecticut State University

State University of New York

Montclair State University (Merger with Bloomfield College)

William Paterson University

Montclair State University

Rutgers University, Camden

New Jersey City University

Penn State University

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania