Do Students of Color Profit From For-Profit College? Poor Outcomes and High Debt Hamper Attendees’ Futures
Do Students of Color Profit from For-Profit College? Poor Outcomes and High Debt Hamper Attendees’ Futures
Report by: Center for Responsible Lending
Peter Smith & Leslie Parrish
October 2014
From the report:
A post-secondary education is increasingly necessary in order to obtain a high-quality job and a lifetime of financial security and wealth-building opportunities. Many students finance their education through student loans because they see its value as an investment in their futures. However, the value of that investment is questionable for those students enrolled in for-profit colleges. Although historically students almost exclusively attended public and private, non-profit two- or four-year institutions, in the past forty years—and especially over the last decade—more and more students have enrolled in for-profit colleges. The for-profit college industry argues that it provides access to higher education for students that cannot be absorbed by other institutions with more limited capacity and that they are also able to quickly develop programs that are responsive to the changing demands of employers.
This paper examines the central question of whether the additional access provided by for-profit colleges actually translates into increased opportunity and financial security for these students. We are interested not only in overall outcomes for for-profit college attendees, but also particularly in the outcomes of African-American and Latino students who enroll in these schools. Students of color face significant barriers to achieving educational parity (and thus, to a great extent, income and wealth parity) with white students.
