Statistically you're correct, but objectively you can't identify which students won't do the work - ergo, you can't discriminate who to enroll (heavy on the consequences of involving the word "discriminate"). The government would come down hard on any school which says "you pass all the enrollment criteria, but we have a nagging feeling you won't complete the degree so we're not letting you in."
Hence the argument that public money[1] should not be involved. The school management can't say "no" to it (from any angle), and the would-be students think it's free; nobody, lender in particular, hammers home the point "if you don't do the work, you'll be in deep financial $#!^".
It's the borrower "putting them into debt". Society pressures kids into getting a degree, the school makes it easy to start the process, government makes it easy to borrow the money, but ultimately it's up to the enrollee to sign for the loan and do the work to make it pay off. Every self-appointed pundit is pointing fingers at the school (for "fleecing" students) or the government (for "wasting" public funds), but nobody is pointing at the students for not making the effort.
[1] - "public" insofar as it was legally confiscated from the public at implied gunpoint.
> but objectively you can't identify which students won't do the work - ergo, you can't discriminate who to enroll
I'm calling complete bullshit on this one: isn't that the very definition of admissions? Even if you claim it's not, I think that if you look at any student's previous grades / work experience / references, you can quite reliably determine who will do the work and who will not.
These schools simply don't want to: they want to admit everybody so they can take their money in exchange for basically nothing. I would fully support legislation to bar for-profit institutions from receiving any federal tuition aid (whether loans or grants).
> public money[1] should not be involved. The school management can't say "no" to it
This is false: schools are not required to accept federal loans.[1]
You'd be very surprised at who won't do the work. I was. Interacting with them, and knowing how they were admitted, I have no doubt of their previous grades / work experience / references, and yet am time & again stunned at their utter reluctance to take basic required initiative.
By "won't do the work", I mean really simple things. A student has a week to take a simple on-line 10-question multiple-choice quiz, but doesn't even look at it. For every creative assignment, I make clear "submit something - even if it's just a text file saying 'I have no idea', I'll work with you on it", but nothing is submitted. I'll take a submitted "program" of pure gibberish, write a detailed explanation of what's wrong and how to make it work, tell them to fix it, and give them until the very end of the course to do anything & everything to make it passable, but no resubmission is attempted. Online group discussion participation is required with a weekly N-post minimum (N very small) with very low content standards, a very simple requirement, but little or no participation occurs. These are students who passed high school, hold jobs, can hold competent conversations, show up for class, etc.; I have no reason to doubt they have references, adequate prior grades, and work experience. Yet...when given a very basic collegiate task, they won't do it to a mere 60% sufficiency.
There's a fundamental difference between high school and college: the latter is not obligated to pass you. Every opportunity is given, every task may be simplified to near-triviality, but if the student won't take the steps on their own, they reap the consequences of willful inaction.
But, of course, you refuse this experiential insight and insist it's all about malicious greed.
This is false: schools are not required to accept federal loans.
You miss my point: it's not about rejecting federal loans, it's about rejecting an applicant who does satisfy grade/work/references/funding criteria when there are openings, but the admissions personnel concludes admission still isn't a good idea. The mortgage industry knows what I'm referring to.
> "The government would come down hard on any school which says "you pass all the enrollment criteria, but we have a nagging feeling you won't complete the degree so we're not letting you in."
No it wouldn't. Admission to selective schools isn't based on criteria, it's competitive among the other applicants in the pool for a limited number of slots. Counselors routinely state that the vast majority of their applicants are academically qualified; students are selected based on interestingness (communicated through essays & recommendations), extracurricular talents, race, gender, and other factors. Sometimes even virtuosos are rejected because there are already enough virtuosos with that particular talent in the university.
As far as I know, it is only very low-end schools in the US that run admission solely off of standards.
It's not really about high end schools. Harvard, Yale, and MIT can turn down anybody they want because they have a million overly qualified candidates. They can be selective and still fill their all of classes ten times over.
But if tiny community colleges start turning people away when they have half empty classrooms, there will be a lot of negative press.
But it isn't about tiny community colleges, it's about for-profit schools, right?
They could probably figure out how to sell it as "raising the bar," talk about providing a more individualized education, ride the negative press as actually increasing the value of their degrees, etc.
Hence the argument that public money[1] should not be involved. The school management can't say "no" to it (from any angle), and the would-be students think it's free; nobody, lender in particular, hammers home the point "if you don't do the work, you'll be in deep financial $#!^".
It's the borrower "putting them into debt". Society pressures kids into getting a degree, the school makes it easy to start the process, government makes it easy to borrow the money, but ultimately it's up to the enrollee to sign for the loan and do the work to make it pay off. Every self-appointed pundit is pointing fingers at the school (for "fleecing" students) or the government (for "wasting" public funds), but nobody is pointing at the students for not making the effort.
[1] - "public" insofar as it was legally confiscated from the public at implied gunpoint.