For-Profit School
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For-Profit Schools are educational institutions that are run by private, profit-seeking companies or organizations.
There are two major types of for-profit schools, the first type operating as a business, receiving fees from each student it enrolls in an attempt to maximize its profit from its educational operation. The second type is known as an educational management organization or EMO for short. EMOs work with school districts or charter schools, utilizing public funds to manage operations. The majority of For-Profit schools in America function as EMOs, and they have been growing in number in recent years.
EMOs function very differently from charter schools created in order to carry out a particular teaching pedagogy; most charter schools are mission-oriented, whereas EMOs and other for-profit institutions are market-oriented. In theory, the competitive market orientation provides the schools with better teachers and administrative staff, leading to a better, more efficiently funded education. However, this basis of financial gain has sparked controversy and doubt in the quality of a for-profit education.
There was a boom in the 1990s in the for-profit college and university sector, particularly in the United States. This growth slowed considerably in the 2000s.
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[edit] Growth of For-Profit Schools
At present, for-profit schools make up only a minuscule percentage of America's educational institutions. But, in just a few years, the number of these schools has grown dramatically. In February, 2000, there were hundreds of thousands of students being taught at 200 for-profit facilities.
Between 1998 and 2000, a Boston-based company named Advantage Schools saw a revenue increase from $4 million to approximately $60 million. In addition, between 1995 and 2000, Edison Schools Inc. has seen its revenue jump from $12 million to $217 million. Edison schools expects to manage about 423 schools, worth $1.8 billion, by 2006.
[edit] Potential Benefits
The basic idea of EMOs is to use the same amount of money that the government would spend to educate a child and drastically slash their unnecessary, overly-bureaucratic overhead. One main advantage of being a market-oriented school is that the school must function as a business to stay afloat. The schools' strive for attracting new customers pushes them to innovate and improve themselves at a faster rate than traditional public schools.
The financial competition ensures that the schools will seek out and retain only the most skilled and qualified teachers. The for-profit school must also be able to meet the needs of its customers, therefore, for-profit schools are more responsive to both the parent's and the child's needs.
Proponents of for-profits schools claim that market operations governing the school promote effective decision and policy making. The models that the schools set have the potential to reform the overly-bureaucratic public institutions around them, making them more efficient as well. Thus, for-profit schools theoretically benefit children, parents, and most importantly, investors.
[edit] Potential Drawbacks
One major point of opposition to for-profit schools is the question of ethics. Opponents say that the fundamental purpose of an educational institution is to educate, not to turn a profit. In 2000, Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association stated that "Educating children is very different from producing a product."
Others claim that because for-profit schools have never been a mainstream idea, no thorough blueprint for running a for-profit institution really exists, which may lead school administration to make disastrous mistakes. For example, in order to maximize profit, valuable services and activities are often eliminated. Extra curricular activities such as sports teams or volunteer clubs are left with little or no budgeting in order to keep costs low. This loss of activities outside of school work may prove to be detrimental to a child's ability to enroll in a college or university later on.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
[edit] For-Profit Charter Schools
- Tooling University [1]
- Edison Schools [2]
- Advantage Schools [3]
- Mosaica Charter Schools [4]
[edit] Opinions of For-Profit Schools
- Common Wealth Institute [5] -- Notable For-Profit Education Opponent
- Education Next [6] -- Detailed Forum on For-Profit Education
[edit] References
- Brown, H.; Henig, J.; Holyoke, T.; Lacireno-Paquet, N. (2004). "Scale of Operations and Locus of Control in Market- Versus Mission-Oriented Charter Schools" Social Science Quarterly; 85 (5) Special Issue Dec, 2004. pp.1035-1077
- Levin, H. (2001). "Thoughts on For-Profit Schools" [7]
- Symonds, W. (2000). "For Profit Schools" BusinessWeek. February 7, 2000.
