For-profit colleges
have discovered that most of their students wish they went to nonprofit universities with regional accreditation:
One career college official . . . said that she has noticed a significant increase among 18- to 20-year-olds who are saying that they are enrolling because they couldn’t get into their desired nonprofit program. “A greater majority of our student body is saying that we were their third choice and that’s where they ended up,” she said.
According to the IHE article, officials at the for-profits have come up with the idea of using military and weight loss recruiters to find students:
Given the difficulty military recruiters have in filling their quotas, Platt said that those who are successful would make ideal college admissions reps. He also cited research that says the reasons people don’t join health clubs are a combination of fear and laziness — and that a particular type of sales person is effective at reaching those people. That person is an ideal hire for a career college, he said. Audience members said that, for the same reason, those who sell weight loss programs are also effective at career colleges.
In other words, people who are good at convincing hapless suckers to buy useless fad diets -- or, to sign up for endless tours in Iraq -- would be good at finding students for barely accredited programs that are looked down upon by all of academia. Maybe they should not have allowed press into this meeting?
