Bailey, T. et al. For-Profit Higher Education and Community Colleges, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, Stanford University, School of Education, Stanford, CA.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/ncpi/documents/pdfs/forprofitandcc.pdf
This article makes a distinction between Public, Community, and for-profit educational institutions in order to weigh the pluses and minuses of each type of institution. I feel it is relevant to my project because within the University Heights section of Newark itself, there exists all three types of institutions; thus I think this article will be interesting to compare my data to at the close of my project. Although I do not plan on making distinctions in my project between the three types of institutions, some of the information found in this article I can definitely reflect upon in fitting my discussion into a specific historic, political, and socio-economic context.
The article is well researched, providing case-study evidence to support its claims. Despite this, I am critical of the entire premise of the article, which claims that for-profit universities are inherently more “evil” than other types of higher education because they put more competitive pressure on public and community institutions, and shift the focus of education from real learning to making students educational consumers. Although, in this sense, for-profit may be worse than other higher institution types, ALL universities and colleges are crunched economically right now due to cuts in funding, and believe it or not, all institutions of higher learning have making money on their agendas, whether public or private (in my opinion).
The authors also argue that community colleges “educate” while for-profits “train”, another claim I disagree with. The neoliberal policies in place at this historic moment of “McDonaldization” (as Mancrine points out) make even elementary and secondary education based solely upon drilling, training and testing rather than really educating (NCLB!). This mentality pervades not just for-profit institutions, but also public and private institutions. While I think this article is relevant in some respects, I also disagree with some of its fundamental arguments and think that rather than apply their ideas strictly to for-profit institutions, they should apply they to all three types of institutions broadly.
3 comments:
Interesting article! Will you send me the link? I think you make an interesting point, and raise some healthy skepticism. One thing I think this article may have missed is the fact that public universities have become corporatized, even though they are still non-profit (sort of). Faculty apply for grants, universities rely on corporate donors, and Boards of Trustees are frequently populated by community business leaders. So, there it's far more complicated than it appears on the surface.
Was thinking about your project, a great resources for is the Newark Master Plan. I pasted the link below. Its a huge doc but particuluarly for your part you might want to investigate the designated zoning in the university area.
http://www.ci.newark.nj.us/government/city_departments/economic__housing_development/newarks_master_plan.php
This is a great additional resource. The Newark Master Plan can tell you a lot about the direction of the city. This is what I love about us being able to help each other out. Many brains are better than 1!
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