sculpture from George Mason University with person placing hand on the shoulder of two people on the opposite side

Are We Next?: GMU Administration’s Stealthy Quest to Build a New Privatized Online University

BY BETHANY LETIECQ, BETSY DEMULDER, AND TIM GIBSON On August 24, 2018, George Mason University (GMU) President Ángel Cabrera floated an idea during our faculty convocation. In order to serve more students, especially those who cannot easily access and afford a brick-and-mortar university experience, such as single mothers, full-time workers, and veterans, he was exploring…

“Purdue University Global is a For-Profit Masquerading as a Public University”

BY HANK REICHMAN In the wake of the AAUP’s recent disclosure that Purdue University Global — the totally online entity created when Purdue, ignoring protests by faculty and community leaders, acquired for-profit Kaplan University (see my previous post here)— is requiring its instructional faculty to accept a restrictive non-disclosure agreement, the Century Foundation,a progressive, nonpartisan…

For-Profit Revenues and Federal Student Aid

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH As the following chart shows, relatively few of the for-profit colleges and universities exceed the federal limit for generating more than 90% of their revenues from Title IV funds managed by the Department of Education: But, when funds from the Department of Defense and Veterans Administration are included in the calculation,…

Toolkit for Opposing the DeVos Nomination

POSTED BY MARTIN KICH The Network for Public Education [http://networkforpubliceducation.org/] has put together this Toolkit for Opposing Betsy DeVos’s nomination as Secretary of Education. Although the emphasis is on K-12 education, it seems very likely that DeVos will support the expansion of for-profit colleges and universities, the increased privatization of public colleges and universities, and…