Two Cheers for Private, For-Profit "Career" Colleges

Nick Gillespie | June 18, 2009

Few educational institutions get beat up in the press more regularly than private, for-profit colleges. (If you don't believe it, read this!).

However, via Inside Higher Education comes preliminary results of a study that shows that no type of post-secondary educational institution does a better job of gradjiatin' low-income, high-risk-to-complete students than the sorts of for-profit vo-tech sorta schools:

At institutions where at least 75 percent of the students are eligible for Pell Grants, for instance, about 55 percent of career college students graduate, compared to 39 percent at four-year private and 31 percent at four-year public universities, and 45 percent of two-year private and 24 percent of two-year public colleges.

And when looking at graduation rates by race, career colleges fare better than public colleges and within reach of private nonprofit institutions.

Go figger. The profit motive may actually be good at something, like helping disadvantaged people acquire human capital.

Whole story, complete with caveats about the first-draft nature of results, limitations of data, etc., here.