05/15/2015
Tampa Bay Times editorial:
For-profit colleges need a closer eye - May 11, editorial
Colleges deliver success
A recent Tampa Bay Times editorial made vast generalizations about career colleges and took a position based on unbalanced reporting by the Miami Herald that all career colleges need more oversight.
A closer look at the facts in the reporting reveals that the "pattern" the editorial based its position on was actually 158 student complaints over an 18-month period in three South Florida counties that served over 108,000 students.
Statewide, less than one of every 1,000 students has complained to regulators about any issues regarding their experiences. And 80 percent of schools have zero complaints filed with regulators.
The former publisher of the Washington Post, Donald Graham, who now is the CEO of a taxpaying university, labeled the reporting by the Miami Herald "unfair" and "wretched."
A balanced report would have noted the contribution of private colleges to this state, which includes more than 500,000 graduates in the past five years for jobs critical to Florida's economy.
Florida's private, taxpaying postsecondary institutions educate more than 60 percent of Florida's information technology and health care graduates, more than 80 percent of the state's culinary and commercial truck driver graduates and more than 90 percent of its cosmetology graduates.
A fair story would have stated that our graduation rates in programs lasting two years or less — most of our students — are three times better than two-year public institutions. It would also point out that the Florida Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability documented that two-year graduates from our sector earn equivalent wages of community college graduates.
The Florida Association of Postsecondary Schools and Colleges has never opposed greater student protections as long as such protections are equally applied to students at all educational institutions.
Curtis Austin, executive director, Florida Association of Postsecondary Schools and Colleges, Tallahassee
