Genuine learning, wherever it may be found

Some quotes from an interesting and hopeful story:

To many officials at public and independent nonprofit colleges, for-profit institutions like the University of Phoenix and DeVry University seem like brash aggressors with the self-assurance of wheeler dealers. The odd truth of it is that some of the most prominent leaders of the for-profit sector are almost insecure, and surprisingly eager - almost desperate - to alter their "outsider" status in the broad universe of higher education.

That reality was abundantly clear at an unusual gathering here late last week convened by the University of Phoenix, the University of Southern California and the Lumina Foundation for Education. The nominal purpose of the meeting was to start framing an agenda for a new research center that Phoenix is creating, and they invited an intriguing mix of for-profit leaders, higher education researchers, foundation officials and others to suggest (and throw darts at) ideas for the sort of work the center might do.

They made some significant headway toward that goal, reaching general agreement that the center should focus on comparative studies designed to show how the institutions fare in educating students, and that to be credible, the work supported by the institute must be as independent as possible from the for-profit sector itself.

“Unfortunately, [there] are virtually non-existent, especially data-driven, empirical studies that compare traditional and market-based institutions in areas such as learning outcomes, cost to the taxpayer, student debt burdens, and return on investment as measured by the relative worth of degrees to individuals in terms of opportunity costs, employability, or job/career advancement...”

“These institutions are potentially labs for innovation, because there’s experimentation going on” in terms of learning techniques and student support services, but “the studies that would let us glean insights into that isn’t happening...”

Given the types of students that for-profit colleges enroll - predominantly low-income, minority, and first generation in their families to go to college - studies of their students could be extremely useful to other institutions, like urban public universities, some small independent colleges, and two-year institutions, that serve such students, participants in the meeting said. "Lessons you glean from your own operations could be extended to community colleges, and vice versa...."

And now for the rest of the story...