| Madison Area Technical College is about $4,000, while Herzing College costs about $15,600 a year, and students at ITT Tech pay about $20,000 a year
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| Sunday
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The man's smiling face overlooks Madison Area Technical College from a canary yellow billboard high above the Truax campus, next to the words, "The Smart Choice."
The placement of the billboard advertising Herzing College near a competitor's turf was no accident, said President Donald Madelung. The for-profit college wants to attract the same type of student who might typically attend MATC, making the case that it can help students change careers or retool skills just as well as the technical college.
The number of career colleges, like Herzing, increased by about 50 percent in Wisconsin in the past 10 years.
In the Madison area, a branch of ITT Technical Institute opened earlier this year and Woodbury, Minn.-based Globe University is planning to open a Middleton location next year.
All three of those schools, like many career colleges, are for profit.
"It's a global phenomenon and it has made its way to Wisconsin," said Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for Advancement of Post-Secondary Education. "Partly, they can find niche degree programs where there's high demand. We're at capacity at most existing private and public colleges."
But such schools tend to have a higher price tag than state-subsidized public programs, and critics question whether the for-profit model in education is best for students.
The colleges are regulated by a state board but don't need to be accredited to operate in Wisconsin.
"This is full-time capitalism in higher education," Radomski said. "It really is the evolution of higher ed in the U.S."
Students say they come to for-profits, rather than a state technical college or a University of Wisconsin System campus, for convenience and flexibility.
The number of students who were enrolled at career colleges increased from around 33,000 in 2005 to about 45,000 in 2008, according to the Educational Approval Board, the state oversight agency.
UW System colleges and universities and Wisconsin technical colleges are exempt from the board's oversight, as well as private nonprofits that existed before 1992.
Career colleges — postsecondary institutions that provide professional and technical career-specific programs — are mostly for-profit: only about 20 career colleges out of 152 operating in the state are not-for-profit.
The schools typically cost more than a UW System school or technical college. Average annual tuition at Madison Area Technical College is about $4,000, while Herzing College costs about $15,600 a year, and students at ITT Tech pay about $20,000 a year.
But unlike state schools, which need to go through lengthy approval processes, career colleges can identify a market need and quickly offer a program to fill it.
For instance, Herzing College started a nursing program in 2006 after school administrators saw a nursing shortage and long-waiting lists at colleges to get into those programs.
At MATC the waiting list is about two years long.
Katharine Skelly, a Herzing nursing student, said she was in the nursing program at Edgewood College but it was too expensive and she's still on a waiting list at Blackhawk Technical College. "I've been wanting to do nursing forever and it was just a matter of getting in and getting going," she said.
Career colleges often boast high job placement rates, often at 80 or 90 percent.
Because the programs are sometimes not as well-established as traditional colleges and universities, students may be taking their chances when they enroll.
Several students filed a lawsuit against Herzing College earlier this year alleging it failed to follow through on promises that the nursing program would be accredited.
While Herzing is accredited as an institution, the nursing program had not yet earned specialized accreditation from the National League for Nursing Accreditation Commission when the first class of students graduated.
The students involved in the lawsuit said that prevented them from getting jobs at some Madison hospitals.
Sarah Dewey, one of the plaintiffs, said she couldn't get a job at a Madison hospital after graduation and commutes to Janesville, a drive that takes between 40 minutes and an hour.
"Unfortunately, because they didn't do what they said they were going to do, my options are limited despite getting a good education," Dewey said.
David Dies, executive director of the Educational Approval Board, said accreditors like to see a program up and running before it is approved.
The nursing program recently got an initial recommendation for accreditation, Herzing President Madelung said.
Before a program can operate in Wisconsin, it must get EAB approval, but it doesn't need to be accredited. "We sometimes need to be the bad guy and play the cop," Dies said. "We hope those instances are few and far between."
WISCAPE's Radomski said people tend to think of higher education as a public good that should be supported by federal and state governments, which has led to a debate over whether for-profit college students should receive financial aid from the state.
Students can get federal financial aid at accredited for-profit schools but not state grants.
Herzing College President Madelung has lobbied the Legislature for a change, arguing that, unlike nonprofits, schools like Herzing contribute to the state by paying taxes. Students attending for-profits should receive the same benefits, he said.
Madelung said the for-profit status can be a stigma. "If you took that label off, we'd be the same as any liberal arts college," he said. source
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Being a male RN in a female-dominated field can be rewarding |
posted by blogger @ 16:53
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