Talk:Proprietary college

Untitled

Just a CIO note about myself: I work for a proprietary college, and I am two degrees of separation from Kevin Kinser. I don't think this disqualifies me, but put in a request if you think it's necessary. Bearian 18:00, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Clarifications: I've removed references to my employer. I have never met Mr. Kinser; we have mutual friends. Bearian 18:22, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Content removed from article

Bearian has expressed concern on my talk page about the content that I removed from this article. I removed content because it was vague and unsourced, was worded as advice, and/or was sourced to URLs that are unavailable and insufficiently described to give any credibility to the content. Further, I removed the statement (unsourced) that indicated that proprietary colleges are uniquely U.S. because that is not true. Here's what I removed, and why:

• Because of this profit motive, some such colleges have in the past been investigated for or been charged with illegally admitting students to falsely obtain government financial aid.<ref>[http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=581189 Albany Times Union article, by Michael Gormley of the Associated Press, April 23, 2007]</ref><ref>[http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=583416 Albany Times Union article, by Michael Gormley of the Associated Press, April 24, 2007]</ref>

- Sentence is full of weasel words. Which colleges were investigated, when, and by whom? The URLs don't work and the sources are obscure: What were the article titles? How would a person find it in the paper, if they had access to a paper copy?

• However, traditional colleges have also had this problem.

-Which colleges? When? According to whom? Again, neither URL works, and there isn't enough info to base a search on.

• Legislation has tightened considerably the parameters for getting financial aid in recent years.

-Vague (what legislation? where? when was "recent years"?) and unsourced since 2007. I know why this is here (increased stringency has come in connection with abuses by proprietary colleges), but the idea is not at all well-developed.

• In most cases, degree-granting colleges with accreditation from an agency that is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education and is authorized to distribute Title IV student financial aid must meet exacting standards.

-Wording of sentence is awkward and hard to understand. "In most cases" is weasel wording. No sources. Not at all obvious what this has to do with the topic of proprietary colleges (some are accredited, but not all).

• Students wishing to attend a proprietary college should consider the institution's accreditation. It is also typical that a majority of students attending proprietary colleges receive some form of government financial aid, such as Pell Grants and student loans.

This is advice, not encyclopedic content, and it is unsourced.

Solid sources exist as a basis for a good expansion to this article about proprietary colleges, but this was not good content. I judged that Wikipedia would be better off without it. Also see below. --Orlady (talk) 17:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

• I also removed a long unformatted and unsourced paragraph about "Differences", reading in part:

"Proprietary colleges are not necessarily two-year schools such as community colleges, which are generally state funded.... In New York, former Republican Governor George Pataki signed an executive order banning the licensing of new proprietary colleges in the state after the closure of Interboro Institute, which created a nightmare for the state's education agency."

I don't think that's what Bearian was concerned about. --Orlady (talk) 17:48, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

The sourced material should be placed back into the article, which I have done. I have no problem with excising uncited information. If you have a problem with the wording, please fix the wording. Bearian (talk) 19:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

For the record: several stories about the investigation of improper administration of financial aid can be found in the online Times Union archives,[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] including some of the sources in the excised section. It is all about a probe by Andrew Cuomo into New York colleges getting too chummy with loan companies. I'm not sure this should be mentioned at all in the article, but in any case the material to work from is there – and I'm sure there is more if you look for it.  --Lambiam 20:56, 24 April 2010 (UTC)

References

Retitle?

This article has some unacknowledged overlap with For-profit school, which is more thoroughly developed, but has its own problems. It does not make sense to continue to develop two articles that have the same scope but barely acknowledge each other.

I think this article should be retitled "For-profit higher education institutions" (or something like that), expanded, and clearly identified as a fork from For-profit school. "For profit" is suggested for the title because it's clear that many people don't understand what "proprietary" means. --Orlady (talk) 17:45, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"Proprietary" is the term used in the industry, is in the name of its association, and is a term used by the US Department of Education. If the definition needs to be tweeked, fix it.Bearian (talk) 19:52, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

"Proprietary" may be the term used in "the industry," but observers unaffiliated with that industry (me, for example) would be quick to point out that the the word is something of a euphemism (which might explain the "industry's" preference for it).

I am familiar with the term "proprietary," but my perception that many other people don't understand the meaning of "proprietary college" was formed through experience here at Wikipedia. I've frequently seen the term "private university" used here as if it were synonymous with "proprietary university", particularly outside of a U.S. context (in many countries, most universities are government-affiliated and there is no private nonprofit educational sector, so "private" is indeed equivalent with "proprietary"). Also, I've seen talk pages or edit summaries (but I can't find examples right now) in which the term "proprietary college" was attacked as being meaningless.

In a global context, I see 'for-profit" as being the more widely accepted term. The Carnegie classification system calls these schools "for profit." I ran Google searches on "proprietary college" and "for-profit college" and got similar numbers of results ("proprietary college" had somewhat more hits), but when I searched on "proprietary university" and "for-profit university," the "for-profit" version had far more hits. Furthermore, I note that the article for-profit school is much better developed than proprietary colleges and the associated category is Category:For-profit universities and colleges, in both cases suggesting that "for profit" is more meaningful to more contributors (and probably users). --Orlady (talk) 04:26, 3 March 2009 (UTC)