Coruscation

First there's the cost: For-profit colleges are often much more expensive than comparable public ones. According to a report by the Government Accountability Office, one for-profit institution charged $14,000 for a certificate in computer-aided drafting that a local community college offered for just $520.

Then there's the issue of how the cost is covered: for-profit colleges take a disproportionate share of federal education loans. Although only 12 percent of post-secondary students go to for-profit colleges, they account for 23 percent of federal loans. And students at for-profit schools default on their loans twice as often as their public school counterparts, leaving taxpayers with the bill.

This is partly due to the open enrollment policies at for-profit colleges. It's disturbingly easy to get accepted, receive thousands of dollars in loans and then flunk out with crippling debt and no degree to show for it. I'm about to fail 4 out of 11 students in one of my classes because they simply stopped showing up. Some students will fail anywhere, but at this rate it's clear that many of them should never have been sold on the program in the first place.

I've also been on the other end of these sales tactics. I once looked into taking a class at a for-profit college. The admissions counselor was quite skillful at avoiding my questions about costs, and pressed me to enroll in a full degree program, despite my repeated refusals.

Problems with the for-profit business model don't end with recruitment; they extend to the classroom. While my nonprofit orientation covered how to create a syllabus and relate to students, the for-profit session addressed the importance of creating paper trails on attendance, should a student need to be flunked, and a video on how to avoid getting sued.

Here's the part that's really going to make me unpopular at my next faculty meeting. Many of my colleagues are excellent teachers, but their qualifications aren't much of a priority for the college. While teachers at a state or private university are typically expected to hold M.F.A.'s or Ph.D.'s, for-profit teachers need only to have taken a few hours of graduate course work.

Teachers at for-profits are paid less, and work more. Full-time instructors teach up to four times as many classes as their state school counterparts. And although nobody teaches only for the money -- I gross just over $30,000 a year, summers on, no benefits -- I earn 50 percent to 65 percent more at nonprofits. I try to treat both jobs with the same seriousness, but I'd be lying if I said this was always the case.

The business model of for-profit schools may pay off for shareholders -- just ask Goldman Sachs, which controls a third of the parent company of my for-profit employer, the Art Institute of Colorado -- but it clearly isn't as effective at educating students.

-- Jeremy Dehn teacher of film and video production at the University of Denver, the Art Institute of Colorado and the University of Colorado at Denver.