Two years ago, the founders of the University of Phoenix announced plans to create an independent, nonpartisan research institute to examine meaty educational issues affecting nontraditional students and for-profit higher education. Policy analysts, eager to dig into the trove of data that Phoenix and other proprietary institutions track about their students and teaching methods, cheered the news.
But for its first report, released Thursday, the Nexus Research and Policy Center has produced a 77-page document that is far longer on advocacy than analysis.
The report, “For-Profit Colleges and Universities: America’s Least Costly and Most Efficient System of Higher Education,” sings the praises of the University of Phoenix and other for-profit colleges. It argues that many of the problems of the industry highlighted in Congressional hearings and news accounts are not systemic, and lobs an attack on traditional colleges as “studies in inefficiency.”
Citing much of the same data that the University of Phoenix itself has used in a report it just issued, the Nexus report also takes aim at new regulations the Department of Education has proposed that would rein in aggressive recruiting tactics and prohibit colleges from offering costly educational programs that prepare students for jobs in which their expected earnings would not be enough to pay off the student-loan debts they would incur. (The report doesn’t mince words, calling that latter proposed “gainful employment” rule “the most convoluted and potentially onerous.”)
Jorge Klor de Alva, who is president of Nexus and author of its first report, acknowledged that the center’s first paper comes across “like an overly pointed, policy-advocacy piece.” But the report is grounded in data, he said, even if it is not typical of what the center intends to produce.
“We’ve got a lot of things going that won’t sound as sharp,” he said.
A Question of Tone
The current debate over regulations affecting for-profit colleges is taking place in a “high-volume environment,” said Mr. Klor de Alva in an interview Wednesday, so the tone of the report, which his colleagues have described to him and others as “strident” and “defensive,” is justified.
“Nexus believes in Obama’s goal” to raise the country’s college-going rate, Mr. Klor de Alva said. “We believe things are being done today that are going to make Obama’s goal impossible.”
He said he didn’t believe the tenor and direction of the first report would undermine the center’s credibility in the future, any more so than its pedigree might for some. The goal of the center, he said, is “to make the for-profit sector better and all of higher education better.”
Mark Schneider, an education researcher and a Nexus board member, said other studies already in the works will be “more analytic.” Among those is one he is co-authoring for publication next month that compares success rates in student retention and degree completion in online versus on-ground classes, using data the University of Phoenix collects on its students.
The Nexus center also is undertaking research that it will use to argue for changes in the giant database of statistics maintained by the Department of Education, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. Because of the way the system is designed, analyses based on its data often leave out transfer students, part-time students, and those who don’t start college as first-time freshmen—a population of students that Mr. Klor de Alva said now accounts for nearly half of all four-year college students and nearly a third of all students at two-year institutions. Education researchers often cite those omissions as a glaring failing of the database as a tool for studies on higher education.
Mr. Klor de Alva said he’d also like Nexus to undertake a study that compares recruiting by for-profit colleges with that of the U.S. military.
A former professor at several traditional universities, Mr. Klor de Alva is a past president of the University of Phoenix and a former member of the board of directors of its parent company, the Apollo Group Inc. He said he’s now working full time to lead Nexus, which is being financed initially with in-kind support from Apollo and a pledge of $1-million a year for five years from the John G. Sperling Foundation. That’s the philanthropy established by the university’s founder, who is also the Apollo Group’s executive chairman.
Nexus was incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Arizona in December and is filing for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. Patrick M. Callan, who heads the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, is also a board member, and two or three others may be added soon.
Nexus sees its business as advocacy but “not lobbying,” and Mr. Klor de Alva said he has no plans to distribute the report to member of Congress, where lawmakers are continuing to hold hearings on the for-profit sector. But that doesn’t mean the report won’t become another piece of fodder in the debate. “I suspect,” he said, “that it will get distributed over there.”
Update (9/2/2010): Nexus made a slight change in the title of its report, which is now reflected in the article.
