I signed up for a law-over-internet school. I dropped it within 6 months - partly because I was unable to get any other students to turn up to study meetups, but mainly because the school's 'interactive' learning approach consisted of a book list, a to-do list to be completed at some point during the academic year (which consisted of nothing more than copying out a set of legal definitions from their study aid), and a couple of hours a week of Q&A that took place in a chat room that could only be accessed by an incredibly old and flaky edition of Blackboard software, and in which the Q&A was mostly from students to teacher. Going through a simple exam problem required a whole month.
I was (and reamin) furious with myself for dropping out, partly because it cost me a few thousand but mainly because I did and do love the subject and found the material itself easy and interesting - I am the sort of person who actually enjoys reading unabridged versions of judicial opinions and trying to 'reverse engineer' the judicial reasoning process. But I would have done just as well to purchase the books and sit at home reading them, the 'school' part of the experience was so bad that I actually felt more isolated than before I began. After attending a law student seminar where I was surrounded by hundreds of students from brick & mortar colleges my confidence took a complete nosedive and I stopped even logging on to the school's website.
I know someone who did, for nursing. It was more expensive, but much faster than going to a university. Gainfully employed since graduating five years ago, and was able to pay off the loans with the nursing salary after a couple years.
I have.
I got my first job about a year in and finished up while I actually learned so much more and faster on the job. For the most part it worked out but the loans are ridiculous.
I went for programming. There were a few things that were nice like: learning about linux, learning some calculus, using different languages. There was a lot that was just dull or useless but given the range of people I'm sure someone did need to learn it.
In theory even non-profit colleges will want more money but for profit ones have investors and CEOs that get paid based on this year's / this quarter's performance. So soon or later the obvious will happen: shady advertising, more students, less staff and resources for them and so on. It's not like they care much about the college's reputation 20 years from now.
You can make the same critique about any industry, but when we do so, the reality of the situation is that we are far better off with for-profit enterprises. As consumers, workers, and investors.
The government's complaint isn't that the for-profit enterprise is doing worse in comparison to some objective metric or an average of non-profit institutions.
It is merely that they don't like their advertising.
Would you like to provide some sort of evidence for this?
> more students, less staff and resources for them
