But most of these schools are in the "credits earned may not transfer" class, at which point the only thing you have going for you is vocational (which has merit). But if you're a hybrid or a degree awarding institution that no other schools recognize, then that's a problem and there's near zero value to what you're offering (which isn't to make it sound cliquey, but still).
Yes, but informational asymmetry is a much bigger problem for larger, less frequent decisions, like buying a house, or going to college.
With small, frequent decisions, like buying groceries, you can quickly learn from your mistakes and the harm done from potentially choosing an inferior/overly expensive grocer a few times is small.
With college, if you don't figure out that the educational provider was poor until after you've graduated, you're already wasted tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life for a useless degree. That's a much bigger issue.
Is using google that difficult?
After all, I went to college before the internet, and didn't have any trouble finding reviews of the various options, and used that to form a list to apply to. With google it's a few minutes' job.
There's never been less information asymmetry.
This seems fair to me. You can argue that wasted money at NFP schools ends up in someone's pocket, but bald faced "every buck not spent educating you" going into the pocket of capital seems worse.
If the outcomes at FP higeher education aren't better, why not avoid funneling federal money (in the form of no interest loans, etc) directly in private profits?
I am talking about both (for and not-for profit) universities.
Isn't graduation a responsibility of a student too? If a student is not graduating, isn't there a chance that he/she is not sufficiently working for it?
or
If a student is not graduating, isn't there a chance that he/she does not have what it takes to learn a subject?
The students should do a little bit of homework before joining any university: does the university seem suitable for me? do I seem suitable for the university? do I think I am capable of handling the study work? what is the quality of the faculty? what the almuni are saying about this university? what the other academics are saying about this university?
If a student cannot or will not do this little bit of homework, then I guess he/she deserves to be surprised (may get a good surprise if lucky else bad surprise).
The theory of markets is that even if a company is staffed by the greediest sons of bitches, market mechanisms will force them to converge on delivering high customer value. But markets work best when you have savvy customers that purchase frequently, can quickly evaluate results, and can easily try other suppliers.
Unfortunately, none of that is true for education. Most customers purchase just one degree. They are by definition ignorant about the topic. Switching schools is hard. It takes years to find out if the education is really any good in the job market. The barrier to entry for new schools is very large.
So even in principle I think there's good reason to be suspicious of for-profit education.
A school, on the other hand, charges tuition, and therefore any transaction between the student and the school must be viewed under the lens of a financial transaction.
For example? Out of hand I can't think of anything obvious - but I only really knows how the system works in Germany, which is quite different indeed to the US system.. so that might be the reason why I can't.