Incentives, Results and Research Needs: The For-Profit Sector

Author/s: 
Jorge Klor de Alva
Year of publication: 
2011
Session topic: 
Incentives and measurement in broad-access higher education

Any project aimed at re-conceiving broad-access higher education must address the for-profit sector - the highest positioned lightning rod in the edifice of academia. A tell-tale sign of the sector’s unique predicament is that while the many failures of public and private U.S. colleges and universities are being investigated primarily by academic researchers with minimal exceptions, writing addressing for-profit institutions has been left primarily in the hands of their founders or executives, investment analysts, think tanks of the left and right, and the national media. That is, by observers generally regarded as either long on self-interest or short on objectivity, or both. As a long-time tiller in the fields of public, private and for-profit education, I believe I have come to understand the cause of this dilemma, simply put: for the public and private sectors disinterestedness is a major goal, whereas interestedness is the state the for-profit sector must cultivate if it is to succeed. It is with this assumption in mind that this study aims to contribute to our understanding of a critical player in the new ecology of higher education.

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