The latest scrutiny in the for-profit education space comes from one of the regional accreditation bodies and their attention directed toward ”accreditation shopping.”
With the ongoing pressure from the Department of Education, coupled with a recent disclosure by noted investor, Steve Eisman, that he is shorting private education stocks and that for-profit education is the new sub-prime, the sector as a whole has taken a serious hit. For example, Apollo is trading at a 52 week low and other stocks are trading well below their moving averages.
This volitility will continue for the foreseeable future and a deep plunge for some education companies is a distinct possibility. This uncertainty will continue until the industry, and specifically some of the “bad apples” within the space, come to grips with aggressive recruiting tactics, sub-par academic protocol, and burdensome debt load of their students.
04 Jun
A New Paradigm
There is no argument that earning a degree increases what a person will earn over his or her lifetime. However, with increased scrutiny from the Department of Education and regulatory bodies on whether or not a specific degree from a specific institution provides the opportunity for the recipient of that degree to be “gainfully” employed, we have to ask ourselves if the paradigm is skewed. Is education slowly falling into the trap of promoting consumption rather than measuring if that education prepared a person to “do well?” What would it do to our existing paradigms and assessments if we based our model on this — “neither self nor wealth can be measured in terms of what you consume or own.”
This is an interesting PBS investigation of for-profit education -
Remember — two sides to every story!
29 Apr
Leadership
In reading the mission statements of many institutions of higher learning, whether brick and mortar or online, one will generally find a reference to “leadership.” I guess that producing leaders is an expected outcome of the educational process, or so I have been told. I just have to wonder how institutions define leadership and how integrated a model it is.
The best model I have seen is the MIT Sloan one which describes four core capabilities needed for effective leadership: sensemaking – the ability to make sense of ambiguous situations; relating – developing key relationships within and across organizations; visioning – creating compelling images of the future; and inventing – turning visions into reality.
Wouldn’t it be revolutionary if some facsimile of these four core capabilities were consistently integrated into a learning process?