Going to college is hard enough, so why are some students choosing to go into $100,000 dollars of debt to attend certain schools? My significant other decided to attend a for-profit school called Neumont College of Computer Science- a smaller, niche, for-profit school. Was the over $100,000 of debt he will accumulate by his graduation worth it? Advertising for for-profit colleges boasts large wages and great jobs after graduation, but my research shows going to a for-profit school is not going to improve a student’s life any more than a non-profit school.
“73 percent of for-profit students borrowed money of some kind. This figure is somewhat higher than borrowing rates in nonprofits (63 percent) and four-year public institutions (51 percent).” (Cellini, 97) For-profit colleges make it much harder not to borrow money than non-profit schools. According to collegeboard.org (“Average Published Undergraduate Charges by Sector and by Carnegie Classification, 2018-19.”), in the 2017-2018 school year public four-year colleges (if you were from in-state) cost an average of $9,980 in tuition and fees, while for-profit colleges cost an average of $14,000 for tuition and fees. That’s $4,020 more dollars every year you attend! For my significant other the choices were $34,600 a year at Neumont, not including housing, though Neumont-housing is required for the first year, or Laptop “fee”, (“Tuition”) or $18,105 at the University of Kentucky, also not including housing, and this number assumes you are also attending full-time during the summer. (“2018-19 Tuition and Mandatory Fees.”) That is a difference of $16,495!
Since it is a larger school the fees also cover more items like a student center and student wellness that you don’t get at the smaller Neumont college. I’m not saying these results are typical for every for-profit, but for my significant other I don’t think he realized what he was giving up by going to a smaller, more expensive school. For the average student you can expect higher prices for a for-profit, and an increased likelihood of leaving school with debt accrued, so you will probably end up with a better life during and after college by attending non-profit and public colleges.
Underprivileged groups are more likely to attend for-profit schools, which makes it seem like these colleges are taking advantage of people who don’t have as much access to information about all colleges. If you don’t have much of an advantage in the economic part of your life, and a college sends you well-designed advertisements guaranteeing an increase in pay in the future, then you might go ahead and sign up for this college without looking at the less advertised public schools that can get you the same degree with less debt in your future. “Students in for-profit colleges are disproportionately older (65 percent are twenty-five or older), African American (22 percent), and female (65 percent).” (Deming, 139) Neumont has a 90% employment rate after graduation, which looks good to people looking to improve their lives, but they have a graduation rate of 54% (“Neumont College of Computer Science Academics.”) so if you do enroll you may be flipping a quarter on if you complete the degree. They also have a high acceptance rate so they may be letting in students with no consideration on if they are actually prepared for college or not, which really hurts disadvantaged groups that may have been out of school for a long time or didn’t finish their high school diploma because they’re spending so much more money catching up to their younger or more privileged peers.
Students that graduate from a for-profit college “earn less or about as much as their nonprofit college-educated counterparts” (Denice, 162) If you get a degree from a for-profit school, you can expect the same kind of financial gains of those who get a degree from a non-profit school. Why would anyone accrue the massive debt from a for-profit school if they knew that they could expect the same results from a non-profit school for a lot less money? Looking back at the previous paragraph it may be focused on how much information you are given about colleges you could attend, and several underprivileged groups meet this criterion. Many for-profit schools advertise how much you could make after graduating from their school, like Neumont College of Computer Science does in their advertisements and on their website. According to their website, “The average starting salary for a computer science graduate is $65,000 a year.” (“Results”) But when you click on the small link for disclaimers at the bottom of the page you find the college warning “Neumont does not guarantee employment or salary for any students past or present.” (“Disclaimers”)
There you can also see that the Neumont got a lot of their statistics from Bureau of Labor Statistics, a part of the U.S. Department of Labor, meaning that they aren’t promising students anything, they’re just advertising salaries that you can get from the same degree from any other college. This just shows us that for-profit advertising does work, and it works especially well against disadvantaged groups of people who would be in need of the bigger paychecks that are being promised without them realizing that in the fine print these kinds of colleges are promising nothing more than other, less expensive colleges.
Was attending Neumont College of Computer Science worth it for my significant other? So far this research says that it’s not, he will not have any monetary gains over our friends who went to a public non-profit. The big differences of Neumont versus a state college was that Neumont has classes year round so you can complete a 4-year degree in 3-years, and they boast that they have many well-known companies hiring Neumont students. I still don’t think this school is worth it though, as many colleges have the option to take classes during the summer and a lot of them also require a co-op with a company to get experience. Looking at the fees for freshmen at Neumont there’s a $2,900 laptop “fee” when you first attend and a $350 technology for every quarter. (“Tuition”) You can’t choose a cheaper laptop and you still have to pay a technology fee every 3-4 months after this huge start-up cost. So like other for-profit colleges, my significant other’s school is asking for a lot of money for an experience you could closely match at a less expensive school: you will get a degree and make more money than you would have if you didn’t attend, but you also accrued a massive debt.
There are some ways that a for-profit school could be perfectly suitable to a student. Maybe the student has a lot of scholarships or grants, or has gained a ‘free ride’ to the school and can attend the school with little to no debt. Maybe the student has parents that can foot the bill, letting the student attend with no hardship. The school could be a good match to the particular student’s needs due to its small class size, degree and class offerings or location, but if the costs are so high that they accrue thousands of dollars of debt they may want to consider alternatives.
My significant other really does enjoy the small school setting in a large city, but it wasn’t worth the extra debt in the long run. A big part of this discussion is based on the student’s socioeconomic status, and if they can’t afford college they will have to go into debt for it. If you have the money through scholarships or savings, then a for-profit school might be the tiny niche college that you have been dreaming of. That is only a small section of students attending college however, and if you don’t have money to spare then it would be a wiser choice to go to a public, non-profit college if they offer a similar degree to the one you desire at a for-profit college, because you will very likely save thousands of dollars. If a non-profit school offers the degree you want it is highly probable that you will save yourself a lot of debt and hardship in the future if you choose that school over a for-profit school.
Works Cited
- “15-1131 Computer Programmers.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 30 Mar. 2018, www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151131.htm.
- “2018-19 Tuition and Mandatory Fees.” University of Kentucky Registrar, www.uky.edu/registrar/2018-19-Tuition#7.
- “Average Published Undergraduate Charges by Sector and by Carnegie Classification, 2018
- ” The College Board, trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/average-published-undergraduate-charges-sector-2018-19.
- Cellini, Stephanie Riegg, and Rajeev Darolia. “High Costs, Low Resources, and Missing
- Information: Explaining Student Borrowing in the For-Profit Sector.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 671, no. 1, May 2017, pp. 92–112., doi:10.1177/0002716217696255.
- Deming, David & Goldin, Claudia & Katz, Lawrence. ‘For-Profit Colleges.’ The Future of Children, vol. 23 no. 1, 2013, pp. 137-163. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/foc.2013.0005
- Denice, Patrick. “Does It Pay to Attend a for-Profit College? Vertical and Horizontal Stratification in Higher Education.” Social Science Research, vol. 52, July 2015, pp. 161–178., doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2015.02.002.
- “Disclaimers.” Neumont College of Computer Science, neumont.edu/disclaimers.html.
- “Neumont College of Computer Science Academics.” Niche, www.niche.com/colleges/neumont-college-of-computer-science/academics/.
- “Results.” Neumont College of Computer Science, neumont.edu/results.html.
- “Tuition.” Neumont College of Computer Science, neumont.edu/tuition/index.html.
