A common argument for opening up regulations to encourage the growth of for-profit colleges is that resulting competition will lead to innovation, higher quality and lower prices. Yet those benefits have failed to materialize in six countries with substantial for-profit sectors, according to a new report.
The Centre for Global Higher Education, a research partnership of international universities that is based in the United Kingdom, published the 96-page report this week. It was requested by a government agency in the U.K., where the Parliament currently is mulling major legislation on higher education.
The report looks at the private and for-profit higher education sectors in Australia, Chile, Germany, Japan, Poland and the United States. It seeks to identify common characteristics across the countries, while also describing the role of private higher education (which is mostly for-profit in countries other than the U.S., which has both nonprofit and for-profit private colleges) in each nation.
One key similarity is that for-profits played a key role in expanding access to college, the report found, often for students from disadvantaged or lower-income backgrounds. The colleges also are more teaching oriented, with research mostly occurring at public institutions.
However, the paper also said for-profits typically rely on tuition fees as their key source of income, and that the sector’s expansion largely depends on access to government-funded financial aid.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/16/report-profits-six-countries-finds-similar-problems-and-few-benefits