The Head of the higher education division of the state of West Virginia is getting worried about for-profit colleges. According to an Associated Press article in the Wheeling News-Register:
Chancellor Brian Noland of West Virginia’s Higher Education Policy Commission said he’s concerned about the rise of private, for-profit colleges in the state.
Noland said those schools often cost a student more to attend than nonprofit or public colleges. He told The Charleston Gazette… [that for-profit colleges] are more interested in their bottom line than the education of their students.
“My big concern here is that if I’m a first-generation West Virginia college student from a rural county, I may not know the difference between the University of Phoenix, DeVry, Alderson-Broaddus and Glenville (State College),” Noland said. “It’s all a college.”
This concern echoes those of many for-profit critics: these colleges enroll students who are uninformed and unlikely to complete college.
While Noland apparently doesn’t think that the industry itself is a problem, pointing to the West Virginia-based American Public University, which is a for-profit education company, as a model program he did suggest that something, somewhere, should change: “Something’s clearly in need of revision,” he said.
Well Noland, you’re the chancellor of the West Virginia Higher Education Commission; if there’s anyone in responsible for reforming how for-profit colleges do business in West Virginia, that would be you.
