Dive Summary:
- Black college enrollment increased by almost 35% between 2003 and 2009, with a disproportionate majority ending up enrolled in for-profit programs.
- Black enrollment in for-profit programs increased by 264% between 2004 and 2010, compared to only a 24% black enrollment increase in public four-year colleges, and the University of Phoenix and Ashford University were the top two producers of black baccalaureates for the class of 2011.
- A 2008 Department of Education survey showed that 96% of for-profit school graduates leave with debt, and the sector made up 25% of federal student aid for the 2009-2010 school year while its students' loan default rate is more than twice that of students at public and nonprofit private schools.
From the article:
... The key to “winning the future,” in one of President Obama’s favorite phrases, is to get educated. “There is no surer path to success in the middle class than a good education,” the president declared in his much-discussed speech on the roots of gun violence in black Chicago.
Rarely has that message resounded so much as now, with nearly one in seven black workers still jobless. Those who’ve found work have moved out of the manufacturing and public sectors, where good jobs were once available without a higher ed degree, and into the low-wage service sector, to which the uncredentialed are now relegated. ...