For profit colleges- organized for urgency and social pain

For-Profit Colleges: Organized for Urgency and Social “Pain”?

Southern Sociological Society, 2013

Tressie McMillan CottomPhD Student, Sociology

[email protected]

@tressiemcphd

Market Innovation or Social Process?

In 2001, 8 of the top 10 producers of black bachelor’s degree holders were HBCUs. The other two were TWIs. The number one was Fisk.

In 2010, the number one producer was the University of Phoenix. It was one of three for-profits in the top 10, with six HBCUs and 1 TWIs.

Source: Diverse: Issues of Higher Education

@tressiemcphd#SSS2013

Market Innovation or Social Process?

• “Poor women were twice as likely as poor males to start at for-profit institutions (23 percent versus 12 percent), but the difference in terms of starting at a community college favored low-income males by 9 percentage points (58 percent versus 49 percent).”

• Low-income female students from every racial/ethnic group are nearly three times as likely to attend for-profits as their higher-income female counterparts

Source: Institute Higher Education Policy (June, 2011). Portraits: Initial college attendance of low-income young adults. Washington, DC: IHEP


Higher Education: Mobility v. Social Reproduction

What if for-profit colleges are a consequence of the very economic insecurity to which they position themselves to solve?

Structure, Orgs, and People

Higher education exists, “at the intersection of multiple institutions…connecting multiple social

processes that often are regarded as distinct”(Stevens, Armstrong, Arum 2008).

All those processes intersect at the point of admissions.


The Study

• Nine for-profit colleges in large urban metro. Institutions are representative of the sector.

• 20 interviews with students currently attending one of the nine schools.

• Three traditional colleges: community college, Adult Ed program, open access public


Institutions


Note: Uses classification scheme from IHEP (2012). “A New Classification Scheme for For-Profit Institutions”.

The ProfitU Way: Enrollment, Not “Admissions”

ProfitU: Urgency, Relationships

TraditionalU: Extended admissions period, Bureaucratic Distance

Admissions is about exclusion: high applications and low acceptance rates connotes prestige and quality.

Enrollment is about open-access with low or no admission standard

Enrollment + Profit = Open access and expanding overall market


Enrollment

1. A student calls or emails and an enrollment counselor answers or responds.

2. A campus tour for any details, scheduled as soon as possible.

3. Reminder calls to keep campus tour4. Greeted by receptionist when arrive for campus tour5. Information sheet. What it asks: motivations, contact

information. What it doesn’t ask: educational biography.6. A brief interview with enrollment counselor, tour tailored

to interests on the information sheet.7. Asked to complete an enrollment agreement. 8. Accelerated schedules means time from initial contact to

class start can be as little as 3-4 weeks.


Urgency, Pain, and Motivation

We deal with people that live in the moment and for the moment. Their decision to start, stay in school or quit school is based more on

emotion than logic. Pain is the greater motivator in the short term." (Vatterott Educational Corporation documents in Senate HELP report,

2012)

“Remind them of what things will be like if they don't continue forward and earn their degrees. Poke the pain a bit and remind them who else is depending on them and their commitment to a better future." (ITT Technical Institute’s Recruitment Manual, “Pain Funnel”, in Senate

HELP report, 2012)


“They Knew I Was Ready”

The data collected to develop urgency often invisible to students or it is constructed as expert guidance:

“To get started one need only dial a phone number. When you do, a human being answers. Sometimes called an enrollment assistant or the office receptionist, this role is the frontline offense for the for-profit sector’s assertive recruitment. To the prospective students it signals accessibility. Connie says, “I was ready. I been talking forever, saying ‘I’m going back, I’m going back’ but this time I was ready. When I called I was ready. They told me they could tell I was ready on the phone.”

Whether the enrollment adviser could ascertain Connie’s college readiness or not, Connie constructed the banter designed to encourage a campus visit as a sign that the institution thought her ready.


Urgency, Pain, and Motivation

Urgency: Organizational response to prospective students that have to choose to go to college (Mullens 2010), rather than implicit default assumption to go to college.

Pain: Empirical reality of those for whom economic insecurity is most acute. Could contextualize gendered, racialized, classed patterns of for-profit students.

Motivation: Has to come from either the individual or the structure.


“I’m All They Got”

Of the nineteen respondents in my study, sixteen were women. All of the women I interviewed were parents, most of them parenting alone or co-parenting with fathers not in the home. They allude, frequently,

to the responsibility they feel to their children.

“I am all she’s got”, Lisa says of her four-year old daughter who has a mild learning disability that requires monitoring and resources.


“I’m All They Got”

The job insecurity that motivated the many of these women to enroll at Profit U was exacerbated by the responsibility they feel to provide a

solid middle-class upbringing for their children.

“She can dance. I want to enroll her in dance classes…something to burn up that energy. She can’t sit still in school. She needs to…be in

something”, said Lisa.


Discussion and Future Work

The innovative for-profit college “market” is constructed from economic insecurity and effects of eroding social safety nets.

Ascendancy of the sector pegged to major structural changes in the 1990s and 2000s.

Prestige-Price Correlation is disrupted: status competition has never been so expensive for the most socially vulnerable.

Debt: a mobility vehicle or exacerbates poverty exposure?

Many for-profit students (including those in my sample) are also employed. Connections to credentialism, new corporate work arrangements, decline of internal labor markets? Could also explain gendered and racialized differences in for-profit participation.
