In the most recent Senate hearing on for-profit colleges, the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), took a whole lot of heat, particularly from Senator Harkin, who repeatedly questioned what ACCSC was doing if the types of misleading and fraudulent practices exposed in the hearing were occurring at institutions they accredited.  As we have noted before, not only do these practices worry us with regard to student finances, but many aspects of the for-profit model give us pause on the educational front. 

So we thought it was worth taking a look at what ACCSC set forth as standards for the hiring, treatment and development of faculty at the schools it accredits.  You can see those standards here as a part of the larger set of information we have about accreditation practices in this area.  ACCSC does not distinguish among faculty, so we assume these standards apply to full- and (the mostly) part-time faculty who teach at for-profit colleges.  The standards ACCSC puts forward are fairly substantial in some areas, but given the responses we have received from faculty teaching at these institutions, we wonder to what extent these standards are reflected at the institutional level.

Anyone teaching at a for-profit college want to give us some feedback on how these standards are applied (or not)?

It's hard to figure out what, exactly, is the most offensive part of Washtenaw Community College's plan to contract out the hiring of adjunct faculty to a temp agency. The Michigan 2-year institution is expecting to move 400 part-time instructors for non-credit courses off their books this fall, followed by another 700 part-time instructors for credit courses in the spring.

Maybe it's the end run around state employee relations law that would make it more difficult for part-timers to redress their grievances through collective bargaining - the adjuncts would now be "employed" by the temp agency, thus drastically altering the landscape for those thinking about unionization.

Or perhaps it's the college administration's rationalization that they're doing adjuncts a favor by removing them from the state's public employee retirement plan that they are paying into but will likely not be vested. Did we mention that the college had been contributing 16.94% into the pension system for each employee? No? That's a big chunk of savings - part of the $800,000 WCC expects to save annually. So, to compensate their adjuncts for giving up even a whisker of a hope for being able to vest in the public employee retirement system, WCC is offering adjuncts a 3% pay raise. If this is doing adjuncts a favor, I'd hate to see what "turning the screws" looks like.

No, the most offensive part of this plan is the denigration of professional educators as so many cogs in the higher learning machine:

"It's really no different than if you are going to hire a clerical worker for a week or so. They send you two or three people and you supervise them and if you don't like them, you send them back," [WCC President Larry Whitlow] said.

Part-time faculty members - AND clerical workers! - are essential members of the academic community, not replaceable widgets. And given recent lines of research that suggest that adjunct faculty members who receive support and are involved in the life of a particular institution increase some measures of student success, WCC's outsourcing of their instructional staff seems likely to have a negative impact on their students.

In Part I of this post we talked about some of the systemic problems in for-profit education recently revealed (again) with the student recruitment process, but here we want to talk specifically about the impact of the for-profit model on the our larger sense of what should be happening in our colleges and universities, particularly with regard to academic staffing.  While yesterday's Senate hearing got all the attention, there was also another development on the for-profit front, which was the release of a new report from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity entitled For-profit Education: Growth, Innovation and Regulation.

Head over the jump with us to see what that report reveals.

In our last look at the expansion of the for-profit sector in higher education, we looked at some of the real problems arising around protecting students and the integrity of the federal financial aid system which is, of course, funded by taxpayers.  Those concerns were amplified and put under one massive spotlight yesterday as the Government Accountability Office revealed its findings from undercover testing "to determine if for-profit colleges' representatives engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, or otherwise questionable marketing practices" in a hearing before the Senate, Health, Education and Pensions committee chaired by Senator Tom Harkin.

The answer to that question?  Uh, yeah.  GAO's Managing Director, Office of Forensic Audits and Special Investigations Gregory Kutz provided an overview of the investigation and the findings with the help of video clips from the "tests."  They start with two examples of good practices, followed by a sampling of the multitude of bad practices the GAO uncovered.

As Inside Higher Ed reports this morning, Senator Harkin was fully engaged and is clearly outraged about what is happening in these colleges and rejected the oft-stated meme of the industry that this is just a matter of a few bad apples.  "GAO's findings make it disturbingly clear that abuses in for-profit recruiting are not limited to a few rogue recruiters or even a few schools with lax oversight," Harkin said.  David Hawkins , Director of Public Policy and Research, National Association for College Admission Counseling echoed Harkin's assessment stating that there was a preponderance of evidence that suggests these practices are industry wide.  "How many stories like these do we need?" Hawkins asked. (Hawkins' written testimony contains a wealth of examples of these bad practices.)

The other defense that the for-profit industry and its supporters continue to utilize (and was echoed by Senate Republicans) was the idea that the investigation into just the for-profit sector is unfair-why not look at the non-profit sector as well.  Setting aside some of the obvious differences in the sectors, this is simply a red-herring approach.  This is not to say that bad practices cannot arise in the non-profit higher ed sector (remember the preferred lender investigations?) but rather the right response here is to accept the problem and address it, not attempt to misdirect by pointing out that there might be another problem over there.

But ultimately the larger problem comes down to the core question about the impact of money and profit on the enterprise of education which clearly is what is driving these bad practices in the first place.  That motivation also gives rise to concerns we have with the impact of the for-profit model on the direction of academic staffing and how universities run.

More on this question in Part II.

Members of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation, AFT Local 3544 at the University of Oregon rallied yesterday to put pressure on their administration as they head into mediation to conclude 9 months of bargaining. Still outstanding are a few economic issues - health care costs and lowering incidental fees - as well as an important provision that would help solidify graduate employee job security.

Job security for graduate employees is, of course, a complicated issue. By their very nature, graduate employees are not long-term workers at an institution - they will move on to the next phase in their professional careers once they achieve their degree. However, their employment is inextricably tied up with their academic careers - a graduate assistantship is the method by which many fund their graduate education, in part. Knowing that they have stable funding and employment, and knowing the criteria by which they may secure these, are necessary to their ability to continuing their education.

At issue in the GTFF negotiations is contract language which states that "academic progress" is one of the criteria on which applicants for a GTF position may be evaluated for a graduate teaching position. Given the student/employee duality that graduate employees are in, it is not an unreasonable requirement that graduate employees be making steady progress on their degrees. The problem lies in how "academic progress" is actually defined as a condition of employment.

In their capacity as students, graduate employees are given clear criteria on what constitutes "academic progress" in their course catalogs or class syllabi. They must take xyz courses, complete abc credits, and finish a thesis or dissertation with standards set by their advisors to earn their degrees. They must participate in class discussions and complete a term paper to receive a mark in their classes. The standards are clear, and graduate students work hard to meet those expectations.

But when it comes to "academic progress" as a condition of employment, the term becomes much more nebulous. While there are objective criteria for determining satisfactory academic progress, some departments reserve the right to override that criteria with the "subjective judgment" of supervisors. In essence, the "subjective judgment" of unsatisfactory "academic progress" - a judgment which is inherently inscrutable and which the employer does not have to explain - can become a catchall for not continuing appointments for some graduate employees.  Said GTFF President Sam Bernofsky, "Many times re-hiring is not handled by the terms of the contract, and while there are departments that do it responsibly, it is just not consistent, which is what we are looking for."