Battle of the Sucky School Stats

Today in The Wall Street Journal, there's some decent analysis on new proposed rules that would restrict eligibility for federal aid dollars to for-profit higher ed career programs, cutting off programs whose grads have low debt repayment rates and high debt-to-income ratios. (I wrote about the new rules in detail here.)

Here are two sets of less-then-impressive statistics from the piece:

"Even with this more challenging student population," concludes a study released in March by the Parthenon Group, a consulting firm, "the private sector generates superior education outcomes as evidenced by a 65% graduation rate (compared to only a 44% graduation rate at community colleges)."

And:

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that since 1995 nearly 40% of students at for-profit career colleges have defaulted on federal loans. An Education Department study found that fewer than 36% of for-profit college students repaid their federal loans, versus 54% at public universities.

None of those figures are worth writing home about, frankly. For-profit and public schools alike are pulling massive numbers of people who can't or won't finish school, and who can't or won't pay for it either. Nonetheless, President Obama remains unimpressed with your high school degree, and committed to shuffling more Americans into overfunded, underperforming higher ed institutions.

UPDATE: In related news, 1 in 4 lap dancers (in the U.K.) has a college degree.