The Fleecing Of The American Student
It wasn’t until I got older and my children started inquiring more about college that I decided to change the way I viewed higher education.
I have been a faithful subscriber to Consumer Reports for at least twenty years. Researching the toys on my kids’ Christmas lists, scanning the endless reviews about why owners of Dell laptops are more or less satisfied than Apple customers, reading about the best new digital cameras on the market. “We tested more than fifty cameras to find which took the best photos.” (ConsumerReports.com). I am also somewhat obsessed with reading about and reviewing local restaurants. With the help of the Internet and the astonishing invention of the iPhone app, I have become more adept at gathering information of this sort. I live by the motto: Information is Power. There should be no surprise that I concept decisions about what college to encourage in the same manner.
Just like a well-engineered computer that will last for years and provide the user with a long duration of satisfaction, education can be viewed as a consumer product. How is the quality? Is the feedback and are the reviews favorable? What is the rate of dissatisfaction and why? What are the opinions of the experts in that field? How big or small is the price tag? Is the investment worth the price and what is the rate of return?
Just like the publication Consumer Reports, there are numerous college rating and informational web sites, periodicals and books published every year to educated consumers about everything they need to know about our institutions of higher learning. So, with all of this information available so easily accessible, why are tens of thousands of students and parents making such grossly uninformed decisions about a college education? Granted, not all people love to pine over pages of detailed information, statistics, graphs and financial information about colleges. After a while, the mass of information can be dizzying. Not everyone is as compelled to drone over the U.S. News and World Report’s College Ranking Guide to crunch the data.
There are those who are more drawn to the phrase, “Get In, Get Out, and Get Ahead,” (Heald). Enough said, now sign the Promissory Note.
Really?
Why do so many parents and students buy into the multitude of misinformation that drips from the glossy advertisements on daytime cable? In one hour, there are as many as twenty-five full length commercials for vocational for-profit career colleges. With inflated promises of open admittance, exciting opportunities and high-paying careers in only eighteen months, these corporations are deceiving their customers and fleecing the American tax payer.
Fast forward to the medical assistant that has graduated, makes ten dollars an hour and has a mounting $25,000 student loan bill to start paying off, six months out of the program. Speedy forward even further and obtain the same student has now defaulted on her loan, unable to make a high enough salary in her field to make timely payments. Interest mounts and payments stop altogether, her credit is ruined, and she is harassed relentlessly day and night by debt-collectors. Cue the American taxpayer, who ends up picking up the tab. The former student is forever saddled with an unreasonable amount of debt and next to nothing to show for it. Meanwhile, the for-profit career college cash cow and its stockholders line their pockets.
Students are starting to fight back and become more informed. Milwaukee, Wisconsin is home to a class-action lawsuit against a for-profit online school that is charged with issuing valueless diplomas. A former student, Anna Meer, states that enrollment counselors encouraged new students to lie on their financial encourage applications in order to receive more benefits. As she states, “They were taking advantage of the fact that I was young. It added up to more than $30,000 to go there for one year.” (Murray).
When gazing through a pessimistic lens on consumerism in this country, maybe it isn’t too difficult to understand how people can easily tumble into this trap. Every day we build purchases that we shouldn’t. We take our uninformed preconceived ideals to the used car lot and sometimes end up with a lemon. That indecent down payment on that house sounded like a sizable deal, didn’t it? It seems to me that this country is purely a victim of itself and the instant gratification mentality.
Recently, our government has started to intercept the wrong-doers within the for-profit education sector. Eventually the corruption will lessen, laws will pass, corporate special interests will lobby to maintain their financial stake, and years later Anna Meer will probably still have that mounting student loan debt. Why wait for the government to lead us by the hand out of the darkness, when we can take control ourselves. Sometimes, it comes down to basic common sense and if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
It is our own individual responsibility to be informed, to read a little more about it and ask a few more questions. Demand a higher standard for yourself, your education, and the future of this country. Set the standard. Don’t follow, but lead the draw. The solution lies within ourselves and we can change the way things are. There isn’t any eighteen month online course that can teach you that.
Works Cited
“Digital Cameras, Digital Camera Ratings: Consumer Reports.” Consumer Reports: Expert Product Reviews and Product Ratings from Our Test Labs. Web. 02 Sept. 2010. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/cameras- photography/digital-cameras/index.htm>.
HEALD COLLEGE . Web. 02 Sept. 2010. http://www.healdnow.com>.
Murray, Tom. “Student Lawsuit Filed Against Online College | News Radio 620 – Milwaukee, Wisconsin” 620 WTMJ Radio. 24 Aug. 2010. Web. 13 Sept. 2010. http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/101353874.html>.
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Filed under Consumer Reports by on Dec 11th, 2010. 