(Guest post by Greg Forster)
Stephen Spruiell notes that even as the administration is trying to make a college degree a new constitutional right, it is going to war against the institutions that have actually figured out how to extend college education in a sustainable way – for-profit colleges.
Why? Spruiell cites “ideological” hostility to profit in the education industry. But I suspect it’s at least as much a consciously cynical attempt to reshape the higher education sector in a way that will make it more supine – businesses that make a profit answer to the customer, and are thus harder to coopt for political purposes.
Among the policy tricks being deployed or considered for the purpose of destroying for-profit colleges is a new rule that would bar them from federal student aid unless they have a 70 percent graduation rate and a 70 percent rate of placement “in field” after graduation. Elsewhere on NRO, Robert VerBruggen remarks that the nationwide average college grad rate is only 60 percent.
But Spruiell gets the prize for this comment:
Imagine the Department of Education telling Big State U that 70 percent of its “peace studies” grads must be placed “in field” or it will lose federal funding for the program.
Gives a new meaning to the old outburst “Get a job, hippie!”
Posted by Greg Forster 
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