The battle over for-profit colleges, explained

At for-profit colleges, all students are welcomed—and so is your financial aid.

Correction: We mistakenly highlighted Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis at 4:20 in the video as a for-profit university. Colorado Technical University, one above IUPUI in the list, is the for-profit institution we meant to highlight.

Higher education is expensive, so people want to get the best deal— a high quality college education at a low cost. This is similar in the way which many for-profit colleges and universities advertised themselves. Many students soon found that the cost of upward mobility through certain for-profit institutions wasn't the answer for them.

These schools saw a huge jump in enrollment during the 2000s. Fueled by a struggling economy and the expansion of federal financial aid for college, many students saw the advertisements of for-profit schools as attainable and affordable. But almost two decade later, there are new regulations to reign in the predatory schools profiting off student debt. And today, over a dozen for-profit colleges in the US (ITT Tech, Corinthian Colleges, Sanford Brown, and others) have closed their doors for good.

[itspricila]

community college is the way to go .
you can get your basics done and then transfer to a 4 yr uni. save money + you can decide what career you want to pursue before diving in the deep side of the pool

[Gamer]

How ironic is it that DeVry University had an ad right before this video

[LandonWard]

This is the exact reason I ditched The Art Institute of Seattle. It's predatory. When an instructor asked why we were there, every single person said, "They got back to me first." This was a week into the class, and I started doing research and came to the conclusion that I'd be worse off with a degree and $80, 000 than if I cut my losses before accruing debt. I'm so glad I did.

Also, my web design class was a joke. The entire curriculum was using a free website to learn how to code for web design. So stupid.

[Yinskiiii]

pls if you're interested in what a for profit school has to offer, look at your community college, it's soo much cheaper.

[surfie]

In Australia for profit schools are illegal but university marketing budgets are huge

[MultiSmartass]

Never trust any "college" that advertises aggressively during the Dr Phil show.

[sergimartin]

Your documentaries are always awesome, could you guys make a video about the behind the scenes of making a video, like the research, fimling and editing? That would be amazing!

[RobertShane]

I went to a for-profit school back in 2004. I still owe them over 30K. This was near the beginning of when scam schools really took off and not a lot was known about it back them. They told me over 80% of graduates had jobs but the truth was probably less than 5%.

[yocampout]

I really needed this video. my husband was seriously considering Phoenix. now we won't

[sohigh]

How is nobody talking about the 11% interest rate?! Rates are at a historic low and you're paying rates as high as a credit card overcharge!

[WajdTohme]

You forgot to mention how ITT certificates are generally disregarded by employers.

[seeranos]

I went to a private not-for-profit school, and in my second year there it went for-profit. I immediately saw an drop in quality in the professors I had, and in the student services like counseling and library services. Only 1 year after they went for-profit, my entire department of professors had quit or been fired, and all the incoming professors were teaching for the first time and were only adjunct and part-time professors. Tuition was more than 12k a semester, and that's without housing, and with a full campus they couldn't even afford to consistently hire professors full time or with teaching accreditation.

I've been to a state college, a community college, a private-non-profit-turned-private-for-profit, and I'll be transferring my credits to a private non-profit, and I can say from experience that the American school system is only slightly better than its health care system.

Thank Reagan and Clinton for that.

[dcabral]

They claimed excellent job placement. One time I asked an instructor working in one of these for profit schools (TCI Technical Career Institutes), and he said that technically, once someone graduates from his school, and the graduate is arranged to work at McDonald's flipping burgers, technically that is Job Placement. By the way, TCI is no more. Good thing.

[stillholy]

I think that we can all agree here, no matter what your political affiliation or opinion is, Vox always presents their issues and topics in such a beautiful, interactive and unique way.

[DJ]

I'm a firm believer that there are some industries that should never be profit-oriented.

[crazygood]

I call them strip mall colleges, because that's all I ever see them in. "Sign up for our 30 week program to become a document transcriber!"

[itshitime]

its really annoying when they use the word college and university interchangeably

[airman]

some people just need to realize that you shouldn't go to college if you don't have a chance at getting a well paying job. There is a stigma today that you have to go to college to be successful. People fail to see that you need to be smart to be successful and that a college degree will not do anything for you if you are dumb as rocks.

[vickiemack]

I searched YouTube for 2 days to find just the right video to show my career pathway participants. This was it! VERY well done! Thank you!

[BiBi]

if you're smart enough to think you can go to college, then you're smart to do a google search on a college