File Under “I Told You So”

New data from the Education Department confirms what most educators have long known, that for-profit schools rarely deliver on their promises to prepare students for successful careers. An analysis of more than 5,000 career programs offered by for-profit schools found 72% of them produced graduates who earn less than high school dropouts.

Why do students enroll in these programs? Many–perhaps most–cannot gain admittance to a public or private institution of higher education, because they are unprepared for college-level work. That makes them prime targets for the ethically dubious tactics of such schools.

For-profit “colleges” may be a bad deal for students, but they are great for the pocketbooks of their proprietors and investors, and they are proliferating.

Huffington Post recently reported that the new federal consumer protection agency has sued one such institution.

Director Richard Cordray charged that ITT “misled students by overstating their salaries and job prospects upon graduation” and then pushed them into predatory high-interest private student loans.

Cordray called the abuse of students by the overall for-profit college industry “truly an American tragedy.” He was joined at the event by the attorneys general of Kentucky, Illinois, Iowa, and New Mexico, all of whom are conducting investigations of major for-profit colleges.

These practices would come to a quick stop if taxpayers stopped subsidizing these problematic schools by allowing their students to participate in federal loan programs. For-profit students account for about 31 percent of all student loans and nearly half of all loan defaults.

It isn’t like these “schools” are any bargain. Atlantic reports that

[f]or-profits charge tuition like private not-for-profits, while offering less institutional financial aid. Low-income students who might pay nothing out-of-pocket at a public institution, thanks to grant aid, pay about $8,000 in tuition at a for-profit school, according to a 2011 report from The College Board. Students take out loans to make up the difference.

These student loans aren’t doing the students any favors. They’re just lining the pockets of predators.

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Government Shekels

Several years ago, when I was conducting research into the “Charitable Choice” provisions of 1992 Welfare Reform (more familiarly known as Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative”), I interviewed a local pastor who was very skeptical of the prospect of contracting with government to provide social services. His memorable “take” : “With the government’s shekels come the government’s shackles.”

I thought about that pithy observation when I read a couple of recent articles reporting that voucher schools–schools that receive taxpayer dollars–are teaching creationism and other religious doctrines.

A Politico review found that over 300 of these publicly-funded religious schools teach the biblical creation story as fact, distort and misrepresent basic facts about the scientific method and “nurture distrust of science.”

The law in this area is settled, and quite clear: Public dollars cannot be used to teach religious dogma. If and when lawsuits are filed–and the likelihood is that they will be–these schools will have to face the reality of that Pastor’s observation. They have a choice: take the money and teach real science, or forego the money and teach whatever they want.

Whatever one’s view of education vouchers as policy (my view, as readers of this blog know, is pretty dim for a whole raft of reasons), one thing is clear: If private or parochial schools take public dollars, they have to abide by the same constitutional standards that govern public schools.

If they are unwilling to acquiesce to the “government’s shackles,” they will have to give up the government’s shekels.

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Civility and Free Speech

At 5:00 pm today, I will participate in a panel discussion at the McKinney School of Law (my alma mater), focused on whether the Free Speech protections of the First Amendment tend to promote incivility.

Back in the day, when I was Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU, I mounted a campaign through the organization’s newsletter to promote civility. That campaign caused consternation for some members, who worried that an emphasis on civil discourse somehow undermined, or was evidence of less than robust support for, Free Speech.

They missed what I believe to be the central point.

Philosophers from John Stuart Mill to Alexander Mieklejohn have argued for protection of speech and the free exchange of ideas; they have seen the “marketplace of ideas” as the absolutely necessary foundation of the search for truth.  (As Mieklejohn famously said, People who are afraid of an idea—any idea—are unfit for self-government.)

The nation’s Founders understood that all ideas, no matter how noxious, should be available for discussion. They certainly didn’t protect speech because they underestimated the danger ideas could pose; they knew how powerful –and damaging–ideas could be. They protected free expression because they understood that giving government the authority to decide which ideas are acceptable—what sort of speech should be permitted– was far more dangerous.

But that is where civility comes in. If free speech is to achieve its purposes—if it is to encourage us to consider and vet all ideas, consider all perspectives—we need to listen to each other. Insults, labeling, dismissing, racial “dog whistles”—all those hallmarks of incivility—distract from and derail the kinds of genuine conversation that the First Amendment is intended to foster.

Screaming invective across political or religious divides undermines the purpose of the First Amendment’s Free Speech provisions. Is such speech protected? Absolutely. Is it useful? Not usually.

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An Ethics Question

In yesterday’s Star, Matt Tully reminded readers of a longstanding problem in the Indiana General Assembly–the multiple conflicts of interest that influence lawmaking in the Hoosier state, and the disinclination to do anything about it.

In fact, if quotes from state lawmakers are any indication, we’ve elected a fair number of people who wouldn’t recognize a conflict if it bit them on the you-know-what.

City government is evidently not exempt from that problem.

City-County Councilor Christine Scales has raised an question about the ethics of a proposal that certainly deserves more consideration than it has gotten thus far: a pending ordinance would require property owners to purchase smoke alarms with non-removable, non-replaceable “sealed” batteries with a ten-year life. On the surface, this is a reasonable safety measure, since many homeowners fail to replace shorter-lived batteries, and are thus unprotected if a fire occurs.

However, according to Counselor Scales, not only are the smoke alarms in question relatively expensive, the technology that would be required by the ordinance (a) has some safety issues of its own, which have been the subject of previous televised investigative reports; and (b) is proprietary to one company, which means the ordinance would have the effect of giving that company a monopoly on sales in Indianapolis. It further appears that the company in question has promised IFD “free smoke detectors, payment for TV and radio public-service announcements, press events and donations to IFD-favored charities” in exchange for IFD’s support for the ordinance.

I know absolutely nothing about smoke alarm technology. Perhaps the Councilor’s safety concerns are unfounded. But the ethics questions she raises are troubling and entirely legitimate, and deserve airing, and they aren’t being addressed. Instead, she reports that her questions have been met with stonewalling and silence.

Is Marion County proposing to hand a manufacturer a monopoly in return for a quid pro quo? 

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Civic Vandalism

One of the consequences of publishing a blog is that people send you information–sometimes to share, sometimes requesting comment, often just to commiserate about a particularly depressing bit of news.

The other day, a friend shared a particularly offensive comment by one of our less-enlightened politicians, and asked the recurring question: what is wrong with people like that? It is a question I am totally unable to answer.

I can understand differences of opinion among people trying to solve problems (people of good will trying to improve education can argue over the school reforms most likely to achieve that goal; people all of whom genuinely want to see the economy improve may disagree on the role of government debt, etc. ), but I simply can’t fathom what drives the naysayers and haters–the people who simply oppose efforts to provide healthcare to the uninsured, or reduce poverty, or insure that citizens are treated equally. It’s one thing to argue about the wisdom of the means being chosen, it’s another thing entirely to reject the legitimacy of the effort, to insist that nothing should be done.

It’s sort of like theft and vandalism: I “get” theft—it’s unacceptable, but I can understand the thief’s motive; he wants something he doesn’t have, so he steals it. It’s comprehensible. What I can’t understand, and have never understood, is vandalism—destruction for destruction’s sake.

Right now, we have people of good will who are arguing–as people have always done–over the best way to conduct the nation’s business. Citizens can and do disagree about policy, and are often disagreeable about it, but that sort of political conflict is unavoidable. And comprehensible.

What isn’t comprehensible (at least to me) is another contemporary phenomenon–one that is different in kind from the normal political fights of the past: behavior that can appropriately be described as civic vandalism. It’s as though a significant percentage of our political class is throwing a prolonged tantrum, with no purpose other than expressing rage and preventing the rest of us from conducting the nation’s business.

It’s beyond troubling–and beyond my feeble attempts at understanding.

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