Commitment in Higher Education

The interim CEO in a publicy traded company said yesterday "(as our company) positions itself for the future, we will be better targeting our business strategy and concentrating our resources on those areas where we have the greatest competitive advantage, the highest levels of expertise, and proven success." With that the CEO announced that they would sell off thirteen campuses in Career Education's system that had underperformed financially or had other types of problems. Some of these sites were featured on 60 Minutes for their shoddy practices.

There is a continuing debate in many quarters about the superiority of the propreitary sector in higher education. It is claimed that the proprietaries operate more efficiently, meet the needs of students better and succeed in meeting the needs of their local communities more productively than non-profit or public universities. Indeed, some proprietaries do a pretty good job in some areas. But if the cut and run strategy at Career Education is an example of these higher practices, I guess I cannot see it.

One of the continuing parts of the discussion about higher education is whether it is a commodity. Indeed, despite all of the intangibles there is a commodity aspect to it. But the evidence of commitment from the non-profit institutions is quite different than the one that seems to be evidenced by places like Career Education. The company calls itself "leaders in education" but their track record both with these institutions and with the broader context of what they provide suggests that a better title might be exploiters of education. Their commitment is to the bottom line and not to students. While some of the non-profit sector could also be defamed for the same time of lack of focus - many in the non-profit sector have a clear and conscientious commitment to broader goals than seem to be evidenced in this example.