Bloom’s Taxonomy: The Rubbish Running Education

By Professor Doom

     Back when I was focusing more on how much education has been degraded (and less on the takeover by edu-fascists), I wrote of Bloom’s Taxonomy, this weird dogma which Educationists rant about extensively.  It’s been over five years since I wrote about it, but a recent book extolling the virtues of this taxonomy was recently pushed at me, and so I thought it worth a re-visit.

       Before continuing, I feel the need to point out that Educationists have been following these sorts of theories for many decades now, and yet education in every conceivable way is worse than it was before they started. Comparing the advances in computers, in medicine, in aeronautics, in basically every human endeavor to the utter and consistent failures of Education as a field should lead one to abandon everything in this field…or at least maybe consider changing some aspect of some of the theories, but instead Educationists endlessly double down,  like other failed believers. 

     Considering how these guys get paid five times as much of me to advance obviously failed theories, perhaps  I should reconsider sticking to provable truths, but I digress.

In this extract from our exclusive e-book, The Professors’ Guide to Bloom’s Taxonomy, award-winning higher education journalist Philip Preville looks at the history and origin of the well-used teaching framework and ponders its future place in classrooms that are increasingly dominated by technology.

     Much like in science fiction, getting awards in education doesn’t mean squat, at least usually. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a well-used “teaching framework,” but I again point out that this stuff is crammed down faculty’s throats ad infinitum. Seriously, why isn’t Education’s track record of abject failure not a factor here?

In 1956, the inaugural Taxonomy of Educational Objectives was published, complete with a triangular diagram showing how educational attainment rises through six different orders of learning, from basic information recall through application to analysis and evaluation.

     For 60 years we’ve been following this “triangular diagram” which is obviously every bit as valid as the government’s “food pyramid” (a dietary guideline guaranteed both theoretically and empirically to increase obesity and diabetes, among other health issues). It’s weird how I can find plenty of critiques of that failed food pyramid, but little criticism of Bloom’s Taxonomy, even though the latter has done as much to destroy human minds as the former human bodies.

     For 60 years Educationists have been using this thing, and we’ve had only failure. There is as yet not one scrap of physical evidence that any aspect of that taxonomy is useful in any way. A person who is a devout believer in Bigfoot is far more reasonable than any Bloom’s-loving Educationist for one simple reason: there’s infinitely more evidence for the existence of Bigfoot than Bloom’s Taxonomy.

      Again, why isn’t the 60 year track record of failure, the complete lack of evidence of anything to it, a factor here?

…is arguably the single most influential work in American education,…

     I include the above quote to emphasize I’m not exaggerating how much they push that crap.

Bloom’s taxonomy is foundational knowledge for every undergraduate program in education and in cognitive psychology. Though it was initially intended simply as an assessment aid, it has become an emblem for curriculum design, used to set learning objectives and design classroom activities.

     Please note I’m not putting aspersions on Bloom here, as he simply provided a very crude, unreliable, and untestable guideline for knowledge that has been demented into something far past its intention, much less usefulness.

…Bloom’s taxonomy has been revised only once—proof of the concept’s durability and timelessness.

      Proof? What? The slavish devotion these guys have to Bloom’s is scary. Encyclopedias get revised every year…are they not durable or timeless? On the other hand, my “What I did last summer” essay from primary school has never been revised, not even once….so I guess it’s even more durable and timeless? Are there really no rational thinkers in Education able to question this sort of lavish praise?

K-12 teachers were all steeped in Bloom’s taxonomy as part of their education degrees. College faculty, who typically don’t study teaching before becoming teachers, often begin their instructional careers—and even continue for years—without Bloom’s help.

      The fecklessness here is breathtaking. It’s abundantly clear our K-12 system has been failing horribly for nearly a century, while our higher education system managed to remain pretty good up until the last 20ish years. From this, one should conjecture Bloom’s is not remotely necessary for good education, and could also wonder if it actually makes education worse.

      Of course, higher education is failing as well. Could Bloom’s be a factor here?

Increasingly, they can’t do without it [Bloom’s]. More and more state accreditors and university administrations are demanding that faculty clearly state the learning objectives for each of their courses. Professors must then make good on those objectives: planning…and assessing their progress both on the fly and at semester’s end…

    So, instead of relying on known successful techniques, faculty are increasingly being forced to go with known failing techniques. It obviously isn’t working, but the book offers a reason:

And today’s distracted students are disoriented in the classroom, unclear on how to learn in a college setting.

      How does this chucklehead award-winning journalist not connect the dots here? The lost students are coming from a system steeped in Bloom’s garbage…how can he not see that Bloom’s isn’t working in the public schools, and how can he double down on the obvious failure by supporting putting more of it in higher ed?

   Why aren’t these questions obvious to ask?

   The gentle reader can read the free book if he pleases but my point here is this is what faculty have to deal with: endless propaganda from a cult caste that is fundamentally incapable of asking even simple questions, much less changing course in the face of reckless failure.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Gay Professor Officially Didn’t Harass Gay Student In Sexual E-mails. It Was “Code”!

By Professor Doom

     While the Leftist takeover of many of our campuses is disconcerting, there is, sort of, a ray of hope here: this ideology is not merely destructive, it ultimately is self-destructive, as much so for campuses as it was for countries.

     Part of the reason this ideology is so destructive is you can’t really defend against any charges they make. Everything you say is interpreted as a micro-aggression, or some sort of harassment…you can’t win against their charges, and so they run roughshod over all their proclaimed “enemies.” Yes, today those enemies are predominantly white, heterosexual males, and that’s certainly a drag if you’re in that broad category…but as they take down everyone in their way to power, they establish rules, and these ridiculous precedents eventually create a system which collapses when they start pointing fingers at each other.

     The time of this eventual self-destruction came close recently, at a school notorious for just about everything but education, NYU. I hardly know where to begin even describing the mess:

Feminists Rally to Defense of Female Professor Accused of Sexual Harassment by Male Student

     Every version of the story has its own spin, but the heart of the matter is a lesbian professor exchanged some fairly personal e-mail with a male homosexual student, who somehow interpreted the communications as sexual harassment.

Me: “You look quite made up today.”

--a student walked into class late, making a

 bit of a show of it. She was wearing a significant amount of makeup. Yes, I was investigated for sexual harassment based on this one comment. Admin could have destroyed me over this, but at the time I was playing ball, and so received a pass.

  

    Fair disclosure: I’ve been accused of sexual harassment as described in detail above. Yes, sexual harassment is a real thing, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to set up whole fiefdoms to search for it, as everyone’s job in that fiefdom is to find it to get rid of enemies of the system, or to cover it up for friends of the system.

       Is the professor here a friend, or enemy, of the system?

Avital Ronnell, a leading professor of feminist philosophy…

       Hmm, yeah, I’m leaning towards “friend” based on that description. Now, is the accuser a friend, or enemy, of the system?

Ronnell identifies as a lesbian; the student she is accused of harassing is gay, and now married to another man.

      And here we bump into the problem with using identity politics to determine guilt, or innocence. Instead of using politics, we have to use permitted rules of engagement…rules which have been established through a convoluted series of arbitrary precedents.

     What kind of claims are we talking about here?

The accuser, Nimrod Reitman, claimed that Ronnell pressured him into an amorous relationship. She would visit him at his home, climb into bed with him, and force him to kiss and touch her.

     The whole “me too” movement says you need to always believe the accusers first, but I have to concede, considering the claimed sexual proclivities of the people involved, those are some extraordinary allegations. We’ll be wanting some evidence, right? Well, there are numerous e-mails, and a few snippets below:

"I woke up with a slight fever and sore throat," she wrote in an email on June 16, 2012, after the Paris trip. "I will try very hard not to kiss you — until the throat situation receives security clearance. This is not an easy deferral!" In July, she wrote a short email to him: "time for your midday kiss. my image during meditation: we're on the sofa, your head on my lap, stroking you [sic] forehead, playing softly with yr hair, soothing you, headache gone. Yes?"

      Feminists came out in support of the professor in an amazing display of hypocrisy, but ultimately between the accusations, the evidence, and the political climate, there was only one outcome which would be “fair” based on precedent:

“…has been forced to take a year off after NYU determined that she had sexually harassed a male student. “

     I imagine it’s with pay, but still we at least have a slap on the wrist, right? When white males get nailed with these charges, they get their lives entirely destroyed. I’m glad we’re now establishing a precedent that even with very strong evidence, no real harm will come to the aggressor.

      Turns out, there’s more to it than the slap on the wrist. He’s bringing a lawsuit against her, because he says the affair impacted his ability to find a job despite his being gay (and, presumably, his associated Ph.D.). She has a defense planned:

“…said that her relationship with him was not sexual and that affectionate emails they exchanged were just "gay-coded" correspondence…”

    Hmm, it was all code? That’s…going to be a tough precedent. Imagine if this actually works, you’ll never be able to establish a sexual harassment case again, as all written evidence can be passed off as “code.”

       I’m dying to see the feminists come out and chastise the professor for trying this defense, every bit as laughable as the “I was just joking” defense. More accurately, I’ll likely be dead (as well as several generations past me) before these notoriously hypocritical folk act with some level of honesty here.

    

She also said her messages were reciprocated. In her statement, she included several purported excerpts of their emails, in which she alleges Reitman referred to her as "beloved and special one," ''Baby" and "Sweet Beloved."

     Ah, the “she wanted it, too” defense, which likewise never works when a male is the aggressor. It really will be delightful to see if the professor gets ultimately destroyed, or if all the defenses like “I was just joking” and so on are suddenly valid again.

       Either way, the system will have check-mated itself.

       It really is interesting how the media presents this professor with words like “prominent,” “world-renowned,” and “leading,” adjectives which sure never seem to come up when enemies of the system face such charges.

      I concede that the system didn’t collapse under the weight of its hypocrisy at this point in time, but I still believe one more log has been placed upon it. Sooner or later, there’ll be no choice but for a mass awakening and widespread realization that identity politics simply isn’t a way to run a campus…or anything else.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

More Professors Letting Students Pick Their Grades

By Professor Doom

     At many schools, faculty face tremendous pressure to pass students, even if those students never demonstrate understanding of the material…even if they ever even show up. I’ve certainly been at places where I felt I needed permission to fail students, both from the student and from admin. Every single time there’s been a problem with grading in my career, it’s been a complaint from a failing student.

     Now, obviously I can’t speak for all of higher education, but it’s well known that the standard grade in higher ed is A- (it was 2.55 in the 50’s, but well past 3.2 nowadays). I’m hardly the only faculty to have gotten the memo regarding grading.

      I recently covered a professor who stated explicitly on the syllabus that students could just pick their own grade, among other things. He wasn’t being serious, he’d just had enough of admin telling him how to grade “with a wink and a nod,” and simply wanted them to state in writing that they controlled grading. They fell for it, of course.

      Other professors are following suit, although not as a ploy to make admin reveal themselves…but simply because they’re so tired of it.

      I really feel the need to point out grades are a simple tool, represent essentially nothing in the long run (and not much in the medium or short run, either). I’d love to pass everyone, give everyone an “A,” but bottom line they do such a good job in motivating kids to study harder, to learn more, to strive harder to achieve their goals that, even though I know ultimately they’re a farce, I feel the benefits for using grades far outweigh the moral questions of treating things I know are useless as though they were of value, to manipulate people.

      Just for fun, allow me to cite an article from 2010 regarding GPA:

5 Lowest Grade Point Averages

·         Chemistry - 2.78 GPA 

·         Math - 2.90 GPA 

·         Economics - 2.95 GPA 

·         Psychology - 2.98 GPA 

·         Biology - 3.02 GPA 

5 Highest Grade Point Averages

·         Education - 3.36 GPA 

·         Language - 3.34 GPA 

·         English - 3.33 GPA 

·         Music - 3.30 GPA 

·         Religion - 3.22 GPA 

--Hi Education Department. Again. At the risk of boasting, my undergraduate GPA was 3.54—unimpressive by today’s standards, but pretty good a couple score years ago.

       Anyway, some professors are moving away from grades as motivational tools, and instead simply using them as a means of getting permission from students. More accurately, they’re using them as just another form to fill out:

‘Contract grading’ billed as revolutionary education practice

     Again, there’s long been a push to take all subjectivity out of grading, and when I took a graduate level Education course as research for my book, to a considerable extent, my ‘A’ grade was simply because I’d checked off all the boxes for my “research” paper (even though doing so made for a far less readable work than anything on my blog).

      Thing is, non-subjective grade is a fiction. It doesn’t happen. Even in mathematics, there’s considerable subjectivity in grading. Even a perfectly correct answer can be marked wrong for “not enough work shown,” with “enough” being the key subjective concept there. Obviously, I make effort to be fair, but I’m certain my attempts at fairness with integrity will be more beneficial than any attempt at fairness without integrity, which is what “contract grading” gives.

     “Contract grading” refers to the professor telling the student exactly what the student needs to do to get a certain grade. Much like trying to distinguish “democratic socialism” from “socialism,” ultimately there’s no difference between this and grading. The only real difference is now, when a student gets a grade he didn’t like, the professor can say “contract,” and hope for the best.

      The article I’m quoting from looks at a particular professor, who explains:

“At the end of the semester, if the student completed the specific work they said they would, at the satisfactory level, they receive the grade they planned to receive,” 

     Did the gentle reader note the phrase “at the satisfactory level” in the above? That’s the subjective part. I give A’s to students who pass my tests at the satisfactory level, too, and I don’t make any claim of using contract grading.

In her email, Gonzalez urged her former students to sign up for SPA 270, indicating that only two students have enrolled thus far and the class is in danger of being canceled.

“I want to make sure you know about some important innovations I am introducing in the course [contract grading] so that you can decide today or as soon as possible whether you want to take SPA 270

    

     “SPA 270” is a Spanish Literature and Cultures course, and in this case it’s clear the contract grading is being used simply to drive enrollments. I rather wish the professor luck, even if she also teaches the more popular Gender and Sexuality courses on campus as well.

     Courses like SPA 270 used to be of more interest to students and had little need of grading gimmicks, but the skyrocketing tuition means students have no time for courses of little job relevance, especially as more ideological courses are becoming ever more mandatory, squeezing out time for students to study courses giving them a less politicized view of other things.

      Naturally, contract grading has a study showing it’s a great idea, and from such a study we learn contract grading is

 “used frequently, but discussed rarely. A Google search reveals a surprisingly large number of teachers who use some form of learning contract in various disciplines for diverse goals.”

     This is because to a large extent all grading is contract grading. A comment from a mathematics students explains ultimately why, even if contract grading really meant much more than just “grading,” it still would be useless:

“It degrades trust in your achievement by outside authorities, including employers, grad schools, scholarships etc.,” he told The College Fix. “Imagine if an employer saw that you got an A not because you were truly one of the best in the class but because you fulfilled some requirement YOU personally set. Would he really trust that A? I think not.”

      The article I’m quoting from allows comments, and there are over 600 of them, none in support of this new-fangled idea. If people only knew that this type of grading is indeed increasingly common, where ultimately the degree is a matter of filling out forms rather than actual demonstration of learning, then would there be a mass outcry against our hideous student loan scam paying for it all?

     Probably not.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Peer Reviewed Research: Women Put Off Of Stem Because Syllabi Are “Chilly”

By Professor Doom

     There are many things men aren’t particularly good at, or even suited for. Lactating is as good an example as any. Yes, you can totally have a male lactate from medical conditions or drugs. It’s not even sexist to ask women not to lactate at work, since men can do it as well (our court system has to deal with the stupidest things at times). Despite this gender weakness, there’s no big push to get more men lactating, and I don’t reckon there should be (not that I’m in any way forbidding any particular man from doing so if it pleases him).

     On the other hand, there’s been an endless, monstrous, push to bring more women into STEM. For the most part, this is wildly misguided, as it’s certain that at least some women end up wasting years of their life pursuing a degree, possibly a career, which they never would have attempted but for those inducements, which are often as morally questionable as those of a pedophile using candy to lure a child into his car.

      This simple fact has long been known in higher education. I’ve never seen any “leader” respond to this problem in the manner which integrity requires: stop gender-based recruiting for fields where gender is irrelevant. Instead, the response is always to reduce standards or dance around the problem. It’s why we have courses like “Integrated Chemistry for Education Majors” and the like.

      Allow me to highlight yet another attempt to dance around the problem, besides integrity:

Feminist Researcher: STEM Classes Should Be Made 'Less Competitive' to Attract Women

    This is, of course, coming from a peer-reviewed paper:

…a peer-reviewed paper recently published by Laura Parson “suggesting that we should make Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses more ‘inclusive’ of women by making the[m] ‘less competitive.’”

     I remind the gentle reader that “peer-review” is highly questionable at this point in human civilization, and much like peer-review shows that penises cause global warming, I suspect ideology is a larger factor here than reason. Science is nowhere to be found in any event, as this is coming from a journal called The Qualitative Report.

     The professor performing this research is not in STEM herself, and so we have to wonder at her explaining to us how to teach STEM. I granted when I was at a sketchy community college, I often had educationists who’d never taught an academic course in their lives often tell me how to teach, usually with such advice as “have more book reports in your math classes.” It’s queer how I’ve never seen people like that ask for more mathematics in the English courses or whatever, particularly when one considers how STEM graduates generally have more (financially) successful lives. It’s almost like they’re deliberately trying to hurt human beings, but I digress.

      So what did the paper have to say, exactly?

Calls for research to understand the existing social and scientific systems that marginalize women in STEM fields at the institutional level have increased in the recent years…

      This is very true, these calls are loud, and seem to always grow louder. One thing I never hear about is any evidence that having more women in STEM would necessarily improve STEM.

      People in ideological fields, like this professor, never take a decent economics course, so allow me to mention an important concept here: supply and demand. A college degree used to be valuable back when few had it, but now that we churn these things out, the value of a degree has dropped off sharply. The only degrees retaining their value are in the STEM fields, because those fields aren’t so generous with handing out degrees. Cleary, increasing the number of people with STEM degrees (regardless of gender) will devalue those degrees accordingly.

     Again, where’s the evidence that debasing the value of the few remaining valuable degrees will be a benefit?

This study was framed through the lens of poststructuralist feminist thought to provide a lens through which I explored how power is gendered (Hesse-Biber, 2014). Poststructuralism “rejects objectivity and the notions of an absolute truth and single reality,” …

     I really want to point out how, fundamentally, this field is utterly useless. Since there is no truth or objectivity, every “research” paper gives an equivalently valid result, even if the results are in diametric opposition.

     It’s very tough to take such research seriously when the researcher makes it clear she’s going to find whatever she wants to find, and that quite literally nobody else might find anything at all and be just as correct.

“There is an opportunity for STEM courses to reduce the perception of courses as difficult and unfriendly through language use in the syllabi, and also as a guide for how to use less competitive teaching methods and grading profiles that could improve the experience of female students.”

      I always have students ask “how hard is the test going to be?” and I’ve learned there’s only one honest response: “as hard as possible.” Any other answer on my part will lead to a student calling me a liar. Since I don’t like being labeled as such, I provide the most honest answer I can give…and I see from the above I’m hardly alone in realizing it’s best for the student if you just state up front that the student really will need to study hard to make it through the course.

       I’d be hard pressed to consider the advice here to lie about the difficulty if I weren’t already told the results of the research are meaningless in any event.

       Let’s look at some findings from a study of the syllabi:

Instructor information was usually brief and provided directions for students to contact them to seek help. In some cases, the instructor information included more detailed information about how students could contact them. For example, “It is generally better for me if you come to see me during my posted office hours rather than at other times. If necessary, we can set up an appointment” (Upper level mathematics).

--that quote could easily have come from my syllabus. I’m a cold-hearted monster, I guess.

     Seriously, the above constitutes doctoral research in Gender Studies. Yikes. As this is a 15 page paper, let me move on quickly to the more important results. The following as a good a summary of the things found in the paper as any:

Instead of only listing prerequisite courses, these syllabi included prerequisite knowledge and skills, creating an even more intimidating view of the course. That language implied that not only would students be held to difficult high standards, but also that there was also a base of knowledge that was required to be successful in the course.

     One of the issues I had with administration graduate degree programs was how you never had to learn anything, much less demonstrate that you know anything, to get a Ph.D. in administration, and it’s clear Gender Studies must be the same way if the researcher finds such a concept somewhat threatening, going into a course.

     I’ve received pressure from admin, in the past, to stop asking students to know so much coming into my courses…I did the best I could, but at what point should students be asked to actually learn something and not (theoretically) forget it immediately?

     What other problem does the research have with these courses?

The onus is placed on the individual for learning, and there is little discussion about how the group can support and contribute to learning. Not only is group work not encouraged, in some cases, the language is hostile to it.

      Again, I’ve been pressured many times to add “group projects” to mathematics courses. I’m sorry, if the individual does not have knowledge, a degree would assert what, exactly? Much as before, an education is not a “group” thing. At some point, a student needs to learn things by himself or herself, for himself or herself.

      Overall, the primary finding of the paper is that the language of the syllabi for these courses just isn’t warm. She uses the word “chilly” to describe it several times:

Finally, the competitive, difficult chilly climate was reinforced in the syllabi through the use of unfriendly and tough language, “Do not ask me to figure out your grade standing. I’ll be glad to show you how to do it yourself, but the homepage includes that explanation already”

      Bottom line, STEM isn’t about hugs and warm fuzzies, it’s about learning facts and being able to apply them rigorously. Some part of me wants STEM professors to go review Gender Studies and other ideological courses and criticize them for their lack of knowledge and emphasis on feelings over education, but only a small part: STEM people have better things to do, after all.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Sub-Prime College Crash Quietly Continues

By Professor Doom

     “Sub-prime” refers to loans which basically should never be made, because the borrower has no legitimate chance of paying it back. The sub-prime real estate crash of 2008 came very close to revealing the fundamental fraud of the entire economic system, only the last minute printing of trillions of dollars and handing it over to the banks (i.e., transferring real wealth from citizens to bankers and the politically connected) allowed the illusion to continue until, well, the next big crash.

     The sub-prime real estate crash did lead to banks no longer allowing a wide range of fraudulent real estate loans, but other sub-prime loan categories, such as sub-prime car loans, emerged.

       Of course, I’m more knowledgeable of the largest new category of sup-prime loans: student loans. The official rate of default for such loans is around 11.3%, but this number is misleading, as many students with such loans cover up the default by using a host of special programs which shuffle numbers around without actually resolving the fact that the debt cannot, ever, be repaid.

      The College Meltdown is a blog which very sporadically addresses its title, and a recent post on the sub-prime college crash caught my eye.

University of Phoenix, now part of Apollo Global Management, continues to close campuses. In total, they have closed more than 450 campuses and learning sites. I expect UoPX to close half of their remaining campuses in the next 12-18 months.

      The crash has been particularly hard on for-profit schools like UoPX. Sadly, it’s not just the school which takes the hit here. Students escaping for-profits often find that, in addition to horrific debt, their credit hours they bought with that debt are worthless, to the point that other schools won’t even allow a transfer. The students with degrees likewise often find their degrees are worthless. Either way, the student loans cannot be paid back.

Art Institutes are closing most of their campuses in 2018 after being taken over by Dream Center Education Holdings.  David Halperin has been covering the story in the Huffington Post, but it has received little attention.  Argosy University, another system of DCEH schools, is teaching out at least 14 campuses.

--I’ll talk about Art Institutes soon.

       Even as the student base is dropping, the schools make so much money that they’re still easy enough to sell off. This eventually will lead to a name change, the better to lure in more suckers who might avoid an infamous for-profit school.

DeVry University will be closing more campuses after their parent company, Adtalem, dumped their brand and practically gave it away to Cogswell Education/Palm Ventures. They have already closed eight sites in 2018. Over the past few years, DeVry has closed 44 of their 90 learning sites.

       Just as the more astute banks saw the writing on the wall and bailed out early in 2008, saving themselves from huge losses, so too we are seeing the smarter for-profits selling out as quickly as they can. It’s a shame nobody in power outside of the for-profits can see the writing on the wall here and start making plans for the nosedive which must come to higher ed soon.

Kaplan University is now operating as Purdue University Global. But the school remains a subprime effort despite fraudulent claims that it offers a "world-class education."

     The site mentions many schools which are clearly heading towards bankruptcy, or at least shutting their doors while the getting out is easy, but the question here is: why is it only obscure sites are connecting the dots? If over the course of a few months, every fast food restaurant in your neighborhood closed down, yes, you could reasonably be glad people are no longer eating that crap but…wouldn’t you be a little curious why they were closing down?

       That’s my big puzzle over all this: why hasn’t the “mainstream” media noticed what anyone paying attention can see?

Ashford University (Bridgepoint) continues to profit amidst state and federal investigations, but enrollment is down as it pursues non-profit status. 

     One way the scammy universities get by is to change their name. Problem is, they still have to advertise themselves as “for-profit” institutions, and since nearly all for-profit institutions are scams, it doesn’t really matter what the name is.

     So, now formerly for-profit schools are getting themselves re-categorized as non-profit. Don’t be fooled by this, as accounting legerdemain can allow for non-profit schools to rip off their students every bit as voraciously as a for-profit (Hi NYU! There’s a reason why you’ve the most prostitute/students, honest).

    A school that claims to be non-profit can still rip students off, bottom line, but I digress.

   Why isn’t this massive, obvious, collapse in this segment of higher ed not triggering warning flags large enough for the media to notice? Much like with the 2008 crash being presaged by clear (but completely missed) signs that a crash was coming, I suspect when the big collapse in higher ed comes, we’ll be bombarded with talking heads on TV saying how “obvious” it was that the crash was going to come, because of the schools above I’ve identified as closing down.

      Hey, at least I and College Meltdown are pointing out what’s coming before it happens. Too bad I don’t get anywhere near the pay the “geniuses” on TV will get when they use their 20/20 hindsight to tell you in a few years what I’ve told you today.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com