The rising of the for-profit institution can attributes, partly, to the inability of public and not-for-profit institutions to recognize and adopted to the needs of general public. Largely due to follow their traditonal way of doing things. It is much like the rising of commercial delivery companies like UPS and Fed Express.
At government level, the most important question should be: What benitif the citizen and the state the most? The rising of the for-profit institutions provide government a chance to re-shape the playing field and make the best of it. However, how to go about this does take wisdom. In general, to achieve the goal of benifit citizen and state the most, the policy should look at both the need of the citizen and the state and the nature of each type of institutions.
In general, like all industries, the for-profit institutions will provide general public more choices with a compelling price, if not tied by bureaucratical rules. However, like all for-profit companies, for-profit institutions will use all means available to them to make profit. These may include exploit loopholes in regulations. Rules and guidelines are, therefore, definitly in need - the question is what are the right rules that will really benifit customers but not kill the industries.
The real goal for governments should be make sure students gets what they suppose to get at a good price and no institutions, including public and not-for-profit insitutions should be placed above this goal. The good price is, in general, builded into the for-profit mechanism. The big question is, therefore, to make sure students get what they suppose to get - which is a very difficult task.
The current accrediation systems emphasis on the formal structure and resources of institutions but did not measure or certify the products directly. One problem of this approach is that people may perceived that a MIT degree is more valuable than that of University of Nebraska. However, a student from University of Nebraska counld be better, say, in some fields but, without testing it, on one will ever know about it. Not measuring of product quality directly is a serious flaw. The K12 questions of High School exit exam
is an example of it. The other problem of putting emphases on formal structure and resources is the un-desired side-effects of in-effeciency and bureaucracy - just like most of the public service agencies are.To resolve the problem of education quality, I really think we should seriously examing the possibility of gauging qualities of higher education with standard tests. Personally, I believe it's feasible, in most fields, if not all fields. Just think! How many courses in the college are graded by standard tests or term papers. Personally, I believe even the 'critical thinking' can be tested (There were articles about interviewing professors from different fields and all of them quote critical thinkings as major benifits of studing in their field. The funny things is that none of them can, technically, prove their claim.)
The standard test has a lot of implications. For one, it put public, not-for-profit and for-profit institutions in the same ground and which is the sole most important thing in producing a competitive market that benifits the consumer.
Personally, I see no reason to require for-profit institution to provide job placement rates information while exempt public or not-for-profit institutions from providing it as suggested by the article. Even though job placement rate has its place, it still not a good, direct measure of students' quality. The rate could be influenced by a school's reputation instead of a student's real ability and this gives established institution an unfair favor and could blind them to see the needs for improvement.
The transfer of credits, as mentioned in the article, is another issues that can be helped by the standard test. Currently, the transferability of an credit is largely controled by the receiving institution. Even the public or not-for-profit institutions can't ensure that their credits will be accepted by other institutions. I have trouble imaging what could possibly be put on the written statement about the transferability suggested by the article. Just think about what a general public or not-for-profit institutions can say about their credit's transferability to an elite institution. Again, I think the standard test is a good way to go about this and it is not an un-common practice for student to take prerequisite waiving test in postsecondary institutions. The fair and un-biased nature of the standard test is invaluable. It settles the matter objectively.
If we look at the problem pointed out in the article on Frequently Asked Questions About College Costs
, it make you wonder what causes all these problems. I suspected that it indicated that the current accreditation system have put these institution in a prestige status and afford them to ignore the needs of general public. By setting a good, fair ground rules, we can force them to face the reality and provide better services to the public.A final note: Companies and institutions will charge only the services they provide if and only if they are not of prestige status.