Or, It Could Just Be A Case Of "Taking Care Of Your Own"

Student Loan Bubble :: Accuracy In Academia:

"In tarnishing for-profit schools with a broad brush, the implication is that the noose of federal regulation needs to be tightened on the entire for-profit sector.To Ferguson, this is part of an entirely predictable process. It begins when the Obama administration takes an interest in a particular industry: “If the administration gets its way and the regulatory regime continues to tighten, the for-profit education industry won’t cease to exist. More likely, it will regress into a form of state capitalism, as kind of a government utility: utterly dependent on government subsidy, hence utterly submissive to government authority, which can set prices and profit margins. The health care industry, with the passage of health care reform, is halfway there already.”

Interesting point. But to my mind, there's another factor or two at work here. For-profit colleges tend to be oriented to business or technical degrees. The clientele they attract tend to be more conservative than the norm. Certainly the faculty tend that way. Together they represent a huge potential challenge to the overwhelmingly non-conservative professoriate at bloated non-profit institutions. Stifle the competition while you can! Or better, co-opt them into being another arm of the octopus/leviathan. You can bet Harkin et al. wouldn't be so strident if for-profit faculty were all good members of the AAUP.

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