Many Nonprofit College Programs Would Fail Gainful Test

“Data in a new online tool raise questions about how well public and nonprofit colleges and universities are doing in helping students earn enough to repay their debt…

“…We’ve only really applied the accountability metrics once,” said Andrew Gillen, senior policy analyst in the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Innovation in Education. “What would happen if we applied the exact income and debt measures to other institutions? What was shocking [was] how many programs are failing and how many students are attending those programs,” he said.

“ This indicates that a lot of the people asserting that for-profits are uniquely bad actors are wrong — as a group, their performance is quite similar to that of nonprofits.”

“There are problematic programs in all sectors,” Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of Career Education Colleges and Universities, the association representing private for-profit institutions, said. However, he didn’t expect a break in the stalemate. “The partisanship that has divided the country has entered higher education,” Gunderson said.

Excerpts from Inside Higher Education, 1.16.20  |  By Kery Murakami

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/16/profit-programs-not-only-ones-would-fail-gainful-employment-test