Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

by Tressie McMillan Cottom

Overview

"The best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students."
—The New York Times Book Review

As seen on The Daily Show, NPR's Marketplace, and Fresh Air, the "powerful, chilling tale" (Carol Anderson) of higher education becoming an engine of social inequality

More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years—during the so-called Wall Street era of for-profit colleges.

In Lower Ed Tressie McMillan Cottom—a bold and rising public scholar, herself once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry to show precisely how it is part and parcel of the growing inequality plaguing the country today. McMillan Cottom discloses the shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies that these schools deploy and explains how, despite the well-documented predatory practices of some and the campus closings of others, ending for-profit colleges won't end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century. And she doesn't stop there.

With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, McMillan Cottom delivers a comprehensive view of postsecondary for-profit education by illuminating the experiences of the everyday people behind the shareholder earnings, congressional battles, and student debt disasters. The relatable human stories in Lower Ed—from mothers struggling to pay for beauty school to working class guys seeking "good jobs" to accomplished professionals pursuing doctoral degrees—illustrate that the growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed tells the story of the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. It is a story about broken social contracts; about education transforming from a public interest to a private gain; and about all Americans and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620970607
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	02/28/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an associate professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth Universityand the author of Thick. Her work has been featured by The Daily Show, the New York Times, the Washington Post, PBS, NPR, Fresh Air, and The Atlantic, among others. In 2020, McMillan Cottom was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Education Gospel 1

1 The Real 27

2 The Beauty College and the Technical College 41

3 Jesus Is My Backup Plan 69

4 When Higher Education Makes Cents 113

5 Where Credit Is Due 141

6 Credentials, Jobs, and the New Economy 157

Epilogue 179

Acknowledgments 189

Methodological Notes 191

Notes 195

Index 219

Editorial Reviews

…revelatory…Cottom has written the best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students, who, she shows, are often quite savvy about the trade-off they're making by attending a low-prestige, high-cost institution…With great compassion and analytical rigor, Cottom questions the fundamental narrative of American education policy: that a postsecondary degree always guarantees a better life.

The New York Times Book Review - Dana Goldstein

Praise for Lower Ed :
"The best book yet on the complex lives and choices of for-profit students."
— The New York Times Book Review

"Cottom does a good job of making the name Lower Ed stick, and she makes a solid case for reviewing the entire system of higher education for openness of opportunity."
— Kirkus Reviews

"In Lower Ed McMillan Cottom is at her very best—rigorous, incisive, empathetic, and witty. . . . Her sharp intelligence, throughout, makes this book compelling, unforgettable, and deeply necessary."
— Roxane Gay, author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist

" Lower Ed is brilliant. It is nuanced, carefully argued, and engagingly written. It is a powerful, chilling tale of what happens when profit-driven privatization of a public good latches on to systemic inequality and individual aspirations."
— Carol Anderson, author of White Rage and professor of African American studies at Emory University

"This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the market forces currently transforming higher education. It is an eye-opening portrait of this burgeoning educational sector and the ways in which its rapid expansion is linked to skyrocketing inequality and growing labor precarity in the twenty-first-century United States."
— Ruth Milkman, past president of the American Sociological Association

"In a sea of simplistic and often bombastic critiques of American higher education, Tressie McMillan Cottom’s trenchant analysis of Lower Ed stands out. As the Trump administration moves to make life ever easier for the nation’s for-profit colleges, this book offers the most powerful form of resistance—detailed storytelling of the causes and consequences of this big-money industry. Anyone frustrated with high college prices, student debt, or the diminishing sense of hope surrounding so many communities needs to read this book."
— Sara Goldrick-Rab, author of Paying the Price and professor of higher education policy at Temple University

"With passion, eloquence, and data too, McMillan Cottom charts the harm we are doing to our youth, to higher education, and to democracy itself."
— Cathy N. Davidson, author of Now You See It and founding director of the Futures Initiative at the City University of New York

"[A] profound examination of the role of for-profit colleges in the emerging, ‘new’ American economic landscape. This is the best book I’ve read on for-profit (or shareholder) colleges and universities."
— William A. Darity Jr., professor of economics, public policy, and African American studies at Duke University

From the Publisher

02/01/2017
Cottom (sociology, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.) previously worked in enrollment at for-profit colleges in the South. Her experiences there shook her faith in the "education gospel"—college as the sole ticket to social mobility—and inspired her doctoral research on this fast-growing sector of higher education. Her book stands out for seeking to explain the appeal of schools that promise heavy student debt burdens with few of the perks—such as libraries—available at traditional institutions. This explanatory focus demonstrates how the for-profit sector's boom coincided with the rise of the "new economy" during the 2000s. Most helpful is a chapter exploring the differences in "customer service" between for-profit and traditional institutions—chief among them, that the former gets students in classes as quickly as possible, while the latter forces them to navigate complex bureaucracies. Despite recent scandals involving for-profit titans such as ITT Technical Institute and Corinthian Colleges, this book effectively shows why prevailing U.S. social and economic conditions will guarantee a steady market for such enterprises. VERDICT Some readers will quibble that the author's epilog discussing "solutions" ignores practical, public policy-oriented suggestions on how to better rein in this shady sector of the higher-education landscape. Aside from this minor point, however, this is a valuable study recommended for all public and academic libraries.—Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted

Library Journal

2016-12-06
An informal sociological study of diploma mills and their often ripped-off discontents. Before becoming a sociology professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, sometime Slate columnist Cottom worked at a for-profit college whose machinations she came, once understanding them, to despise. In this slender book, she lays out a case against a system that engenders predation and that profits, in the end, from social and economic injustice. The unknown number of for-profit students—variously said to be between 1.2 million and about twice that many enrollees—pays about 20 percent more than at a "flagship public university" for an undergraduate degree but about four times more than an associate's degree at a community college. What drives this preyed-upon class, whose members, the author rightly adds, are not necessarily academically inferior? In part, perhaps, the promise of a degree more easily attained than at a regular academic institution. However, writes Cottom, another factor is that most of these students, ill-educated to begin with, simply have no preparation in navigating bureaucracies and no way of gauging the difference between one school and the next, down to knowing what the cost might be. "Traditional colleges," she writes, "benefit from a deeply entrenched cultural faith in the value of college, particularly among higher-status groups." For the lower-status and the aspirational, college is a way of getting one's ticket punched, to get a credential that might lead somewhere better. In the end, Cottom suggests, by their very existence, with reassuringly august names like the University of Phoenix and ITT Technical Institute (and, perhaps most notoriously, Trump University), these schools, which are often publicly subsidized to some extent, are "an indicator of social and economic inequalities and, at the same time, are perpetuators of those inequalities." Cottom does a good job of making the name "Lower Ed" stick, and she makes a solid case for reviewing the entire system of higher education for openness of opportunity.

Kirkus Reviews

Listeners follow the author’s premise that the for-profit higher education industry exacerbates inequality and poor outcomes through predatory lending tactics aimed at vulnerable populations. Narrator Lisa Renee Pitts’s slightly nasally voice navigates complex financial figures alongside the personal accounts of students. She manages both clarity amid the numbers and an emotional tone for the individuals. Pitts captures Cottom’s prose style perfectly, shifting between a critical voice while exploring the research on higher education, inequality, and access and a personal tone while expressing Cottom’s frustration with her own part in the highly questionable system. L.E. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2017 - AudioFile