Mitt Romney's Rationale On For-Profit Colleges At Odds With Reality

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/15/mitt-romney-for-profit-colleges_n_1207382.html

Along the campaign trail during the past month, Mitt Romney has been offering up his answer to the soaring costs of higher education and student debt: competition from for-profit colleges.

Among other benefits, Romney said, "they hold down the cost of their education" by virtue of being in competition with other universities, according to a New York Times article on Sunday.

Yet Romney's free-market views on higher education collide with reality. Although tuition is rising across higher education -- particularly at public universities, which have been strangled by state budget cuts -- students are not flocking to for-profit schools such as the University of Phoenix or ITT Technical Institute because the price point is lower.

Indeed, the average tuition at for-profit colleges is nearly twice that of public four-year universities, and nearly five times as much as public community colleges, according to Department of Education data analyzed by the College Board.

But many community college systems are struggling in the face of surging enrollment combined with diminished financial support from cash-strapped states. A recent investigation by The Huffington Post found that many students who attend for-profit colleges are there only because of their frustration after being shut out of oversubscribed classes at much cheaper local community college programs. The public programs typically leave students with much smaller debt loads and a greater likelihood of being employed after college, according to a recent study by Harvard researchers.

And despite the considerable cost, federal data show that for-profit colleges on average devote less than a third of the money that public universities do toward student instruction, and less than a fifth of the money spent on students by private non-profit institutions.

According to the Times, Romney also suggested that supporting for-profit schools could be a solution to growing student debt.