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

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.