College Inc. Reflection
College Inc. was a frontline documentary that focused on the rapidly changing world of post secondary education in the United States and the rapid pace at which college’s in America are operating more as a business than they are as an actual learning institution. The documentary mainly centers around, and lays the guilt upon college’s which mostly operate for profit such as Everest College, University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon University, and other knockoff college’s that are on the television set advertising how well they supposedly do for their graduates at all hours of the day. This college’s run in a way that is sickening and appalling to me. The documentary, I felt, did a good job at pointing out these college’s in their true nature, and at the same time offering to cover both sides of the story concerning these college’s. It interviewed students who had attended the colleges, as well as those who inject large amounts of capital to turn these ‘learning institutions’ into places to attract students to and then make huge amounts of profit once they are enrolled and paying outrageous prices for their courses. The documentary had its facts ready for consumption by its audience, which is something I really liked about it. It showed the outrageous cost of education at the for profit facilities, versus traditional community college or even university. In most instances, costs for credit hours at for profit universities, like University of Phoenix, dwarfed costs of traditional community college. I was also impressed that this documentary paired the prices with the quality of education received at these institutions and was fair enough to acknowledge that there was no actual way to gauge what the quality of education was, but in many cases former students were turned down for positions after being cited for not having enough practical experience that they could have gained while attending the institutions, a notable example being nurses from Everest college. I felt it operated from an unbiased perspective, and personally I was shocked to know that tuition rates for these second hand institutions are as much as a community college or even more.
As the documentary stated, these institutions are able to take advantage of students who want to go back to school in order to help their chances in the job market of today. This echoes the reading summary which states that education is such a priority because it is intertwined with the health of the economy and the job market. This would be a reason that these institutions fall under attack, and would also reveal what they prey on. With a labor force seeking education, and the schools ability to be flexible, it is almost a perfect match for these two to come together for the purpose of education, but with an undereducated and indebted labor force coming out of these institutions, are they causing more harm than good? That is to be seen by the results of the ones who are and were educated at these places.
As stated earlier, the documentary does a good job of tying together the economic impact of their education and showing how intertwined education is with the economy and the labor force. A better educated population will wield a stronger economy in their hands for the taking of jobs, as the CQR school reform document also points out when it shows us, in a graph depiction, that a population that is less educated at math is more likely to be poor and on a micro scale that someone who is not well educated with math has a higher chance for poverty than those who are. It is a tie in to education and economic status, both on a macro and micro scale. Change must be had by the current institutions, so that business corporate like, for profit ‘universities’ do not take their place in poorly educating a population that is seeking to gain an education. The reading points out that a major hurdle to improving schools would be to deal with teachers unions first, who focus more on keeping a job rather than keeping an educated and effective staff. This may have adverse effects, though, in ripping voices from teachers who must behave collectively to achieve change. Either way, change needs to be enacted to keep College inc. from happening to everyone seeking an education and being taken advantage of for it.