Justin Pope at the Associated Press has been doing terrific work on for-profit colleges. On the face of it, it looks like they have an incentive to take lots of low-income students (and their associated aid) even if they have little chance of succeeding. Which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your perspective.
I love the Washington Post Company, I owe it my career and my social life, Don Graham is wonderful in many ways, and we can thank Kaplan for helping to subsidize the publication of a great (though thinning, grrrrr) newspaper. However, a 23 percent three-year default rate at Kaplan University? Default rates aren’t everything, and they are going to be high when you enroll the neediest students, but there is a lot to plumb here. We need more in-depth stories, with real people. Who is attending these schools, why are they expensive, what makes it hard to finish and pay back loans?
The great thing is that people all around you are attending for-profit, online universities, so if you cover higher education anywhere, they are on your beat!
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