Insider's View of For-Profit Colleges, Race, Class and Education Justice

• Kaplan's assertion that students' fears and pain should be used to motivate them insinuates what many of us suspect to be true of the people who end up at for-profit colleges: they are lazy and stupid. But the students I worked with were not lazy, unmotivated, or stupid.
• Mitt Romney's Rationale On For-Profit Colleges At Odds With Reality
• Forced Military Testing in America's Schools

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Huffington Post

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I was not at all shocked by Kaplan University defending its practice of reminding people of their "pain and fears" to motivate them to make "urgent change." The practice is common in the for-profit college business model. As an admissions and financial aid counselor at two for-profit colleges, including one of the largest -- ITT Technical Institute -- I saw that sentiment expressed both verbally and structurally. Of the two, it is the latter that should concern us most of all.

In the first half of my for-profit college career, I helped mostly young, working class women enroll in an expensive cosmetology program. At almost $14,000 it was an expensive 9-month credential, but it was a credential with a clear occupational outcome. I watched young women go on to become self-sufficient in ways that rippled out to their children, families, and communities. Giving a woman a flat iron can change a child's life expectancy and educational trajectory, a grandparent's end-of-life care, and end an abusive relationship. I am proud of the work I did with those women.

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Related:

Mitt Romney's Rationale On For-Profit Colleges At Odds With Reality, Chris Kirkham, Huffington Post

• Romney's free-market views on higher education collide with reality.
• Insider's View of For-Profit Colleges, Race, Class and Education Justice

Forced Military Testing in America's Schools, Pat Elder, Common Dreams
There is great reluctance in American society to stand up to the U.S. military, particularly concerning the way it runs a dozen programs in the nation's schools. Calls for transparency are met with silence and indignation, a terrible lesson for American high school students.