'Surfing Seniors'

Lawmakers are urged to 'go slowly' on loosening rules for for-profit colleges

'Surfing Seniors'

ASHLAND - The halls had changed somewhat since Bill Metzler used to walk up and down them as a junior high school student in the 1930s.

"I just thought: This brings back memories from years back when I was first enrolled," said Metzler, who passed through what used to be known as Putnam Junior High before graduating from Ashland High School in 1942.

On Saturday, he was one of 29 students enrolled in a "Surfing Seniors" introductory computer class at what is now Verity Middle School. Taking a break to chat as students from Ashland Community and Technical College offered instruction, he marveled at what used to be.

The entrance, he said, was clear on the other side of the building and the structure, which he hadn't visited since leaving the school, has been entirely remodeled.

Metzler, whose family migrated to Ashland from Arkansas during the Great Depression, also remembered sodding the football field which was being constructed by federal WPA workers.

"Everything. I haven't taken a tour, but it's completely been remodeled," said Metzler. "... What I've seen doesn't even resemble the old Putnam."

But, then, a lot things have changed. Computers, he said with a laugh, definitely weren't a part of the school's curriculum.

"Oh, no," he said. "That was years later."

These days, just about everyone - from preschoolers to senior citizens - is confronted with computers. From sending e-mails to keeping up personal finances to business purposes, reasons for becoming technologically literate abound.

But that doesn't mean computer skills come naturally - particularly those who grew up before the world went "paper free."

"I just feel like I'd like to know (how to use a computer)," said Joyce Webb. A local homemaker with two adult sons and a working husband, she longs to be able to communicate via e-mail. "There are so many times I just feel like I need to know."

Judging from the morning's turnout, others appeared to feel the same way.

Such was the theory of Ashland Community and Technical College's SIFE (Students In Free Enterprise) club. The group decided to teach the class, aimed mostly at senior citizens, as a free community service to help others learn basic computer skills.

The course is one of four projects the club will conduct throughout the semester. Work will focus on entrepreneurship, personal finance, business ethics and international economics.

"Surfing Seniors" actually had been suggested a year ago, and was taken up by this year's group as its choice for a project.

When all projects are completed, the group will compile a report and presentation to take to a regional competition in Cincinnati, with the intent of living up to last year's club which wound up competing nationally.

ACTC business instructor Molly Webb, a SIFE co-advisor along with John Davis, said the young college students are dedicated to the club, as well as providing community service. Many, she said, hold regular jobs in addition to going to college.

Some had even taken off work in order to able to instruct the course.

"They're all very ambitious," said Webb, looking on as SIFE students conducted class. "They work, have families, and take time to do SIFE."

The Chronicle of Higher Education
March 2, 2005

Lawmakers are urged to 'go slowly' on loosening rules for for-profit colleges

A watchdog official at the U.S. Education Department on Tuesday urged lawmakers to "go slowly" on proposed legislation that would relax some rules that for-profit colleges must follow to participate in federal student-aid programs.

Thomas A. Carter, the department's deputy inspector general, told members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce that they should be careful not to remove from the Higher Education Act provisions meant to protect the student-aid programs from fraud without considering the ramifications of doing so.

"I would go slowly on eliminating any rule before I knew what the effect of eliminating that rule would be," Mr. Carter said. "I'm just talking about giving due consideration of what the rule is intended to do. If there is another rule that would work better -- and I am not in a position to say that -- then I think that should be considered."

Mr. Carter made his comments at a hearing that was called to discuss allegations of wrongdoing by some for-profit institutions that were raised in a report on the industry by the CBS television program 60 Minutes. The committee's Republican leaders agreed to hold the hearing after the panel's top Democrats demanded it.

Rep. John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican who chairs of the committee, said he was concerned about the allegations but rejected arguments put forward by some Democrats and a couple of the witnesses that such problems were widespread throughout the for-profit higher-education industry.

"We can't condemn an entire sector for the errors of a relatively small number of bad actors, but we can't turn a blind eye to those errors either," Mr. Boehner said. "This is the case in the for-profit education industry. It's also the case in the nonprofit education industry."

At issue is legislation that would strip from the Higher Education Act provisions added by Congress in 1992 to crack down on fly-by-night schools that had been set up to reap profits from the aid programs.

The legislation (HR 609) would, for example, eliminate a rule that requires a for-profit college to receive at least 10 percent of its tuition-and-fee revenue from nonfederal sources in order to participate in the federal student-aid programs. The legislation would also remove the "50-percent rule," which prevents institutions that offer more than half of their courses via distance education from providing federal financial aid.

It would also replace the definition of "an institution of higher education" in the law with one that includes proprietary institutions. With that change alone, for-profit colleges would become eligible for millions of dollars of aid from a variety of federal programs (The Chronicle, September 5, 2003).

The bill's sponsors -- Mr. Boehner and Rep. Howard P. (Buck) McKeon, a Republican from California -- said that the proposed changes are necessary to ease restrictions in the law that discriminate against students at for-profit colleges (The Chronicle, June 17, 2004). "Proprietary-school students and the institutions they attend are essentially treated like second-class citizens under outdated current law," Mr. Boehner said at the hearing.

But the committee's ranking Democrats rejected those assertions and said provisions in the bill would open the door to fraud and abuse in the aid programs. "Although significant problems still exist, many of these protections have been substantially weakened or are being considered for repeal," said Rep. George Miller of California, the panel's top Democrat. "We must balance flexibility and innovation in higher education against the danger or repeating past abuses."

Pressed by Democrats, Mr. Carter, the deputy inspector general, said his most serious reservations were about eliminating the rule that bars for-profit colleges from receiving 90 percent or more of their revenues from the government's aid programs.

The industry's critics say the provision is important because it requires proprietary institutions to prove that the training they offer is valuable. If the training is worthwhile, they say, a for-profit college should be able to derive at least 10 percent of its revenue from students willing to spend their own money on it. Advocates for for-profit higher education argue that the provision is discriminatory to their students and have made the elimination of that provision one of their top legislative goals this year.

Mr. Carter said that because "the rule was put in to stop some of the abuses from schools that were offering poor programs," he wouldn't change it without "looking to keep something that would avoid those abuses from happening again."

"I've heard the industry argue that they don't want to go back to those days," he said. "I guess everybody agrees that they don't want to go back to those days, so I would argue that we consider the effect of eliminating that rule and consider what substitutes there could be."

The 60 Minutes segment, which was shown in January, focused on aggressive and misleading admissions tactics purportedly used at a number of colleges owned by the Career Education Corporation. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating the operations of Career Education, which has 82 campuses in the United States and abroad. Another company, ITT Educational Services, is also under investigation by those agencies. Several of the publically-traded companies are also facing class-action lawsuits from students, former employees, and stockholders that accuse them of wrongdoing.

Testifying at the hearing, Rep. Maxine Waters, a Democrat from California who is a longtime critic of for-profit colleges, told the lawmakers that with all of the lawsuits and investigations, the government should be increasing, not lessening, its oversight of the institutions. "What is happening with the rip-off of poor students -- minorities in particular -- is a scandal in this country," Ms. Waters said.

Another witness -- Paula L. Dorsey, a former admissions director at a campus of Bryman College, which is owned by Corinthian Colleges -- told the committee members that her corporate bosses had fired her because she had refused to engage in "unethical and underhanded" practices aimed at pumping up enrollment numbers and obtaining financial-aid dollars from the government. She said that the institution routinely misled students by enrolling them in courses that were not being offered and then pressuring them to take courses in other fields. She also alleged that students at her college were encouraged to forge their parents' signatures on the federal student-aid form.

"I urge that further investigation and a higher standard of regulations be sought after in regards to the for-profit career college sector," said Ms. Dorsey, who served as admissions director at Bryman's Reseda, Calif., campus for only 90 days before being dismissed. "Somewhere in the process of a need to provide citizens with a quality education, these corporations have found their only priority to be showcasing numbers for shareholders and turning an enormous profit."

Following the hearing, a spokeswoman for Corinthian Colleges, told The Chronicle that Ms. Dorsey had been let go because of "poor performance." She said that Ms. Dorsey had never raised her concerns with her bosses at Bryman College.

Corinthian reported earlier this year that the SEC had concluded an informal inquiry into the company and had recommended that "no enforcement action" be taken (The Chronicle, January 25).

In other testimony on Tuesday, Nicholas J. Glakas, president of the Career College Association, cautioned the committee not to make policy based on anecdotes. He said that that policymakers should not assume that an institution that is being investigated has done anything wrong. "Until an investigation has been concluded, no conclusions should be drawn since no charges have been made," he said.

Mr. Glakas also disputed that the allegations that have been made indicate that there is "an industrywide problem." Noting that there are 2,500 for-profit colleges that receive federal financial aid, he said, "Even if 15 to 20 campuses were under investigation, this would still be less than 1 percent."

At the conclusion of the hearing, Representative Boehner made clear that while he is open to considering proposals to increase government oversight of both for-profit and nonprofit colleges, he was not backing off the provisions in the bill.

He noted that his daughter had recently graduated from a for-profit college. "She is gainfully employed," he said. "I'm very happy about that. She owns her own condo, she owns her car, she has a very good job.

"So while there are always horror stories, we shouldn't paint the entire industry with a broad brush that they're not getting the job done," Mr. Boehner continued. "When you look at the training that's being done for the work force of the 21st century, I think a lot of our schools, both in the for-profit and nonprofit sector, are doing a good job for our country."