Facing pressure to shape up from Democrats in Congress, the federal Education Department, accreditors, and even traditional nonprofit institutions, a small group of proprietary colleges is trying to set a good example for the rest of its sector.
In an agreement released on Wednesday, the 20 colleges in the group pledge that, by December 15, they will post on their Web sites their cost of tuition, their graduation rates, and whether their academic programs will qualify students for licensure in a given field, among other details.
The code of conduct was developed after a February meeting of representatives of regionally accredited for-profit colleges in New York that was hosted by Berkeley College and its president, Dario A. Cortes.
The meeting and the resulting agreement reflect a recognition that the public and some policy makers have a poor perception of for-profit colleges, Mr. Cortes said. They are also an attempt to show that proprietary institutions are capable of regulating themselves without further intervention from federal and state governments. The U.S. Department of Education has in the past year released a flurry of new regulations meant to curb alleged abuses by for-profit colleges. Democratic members of Congress have also focused heavily on charges of fraud and abuse by the proprietary sector.
Several state governments, too, have begun to pass more-stringent laws to regulate for-profit colleges.
“We have enough overseers,” Mr. Cortes said. “What we need to do is have a thoughtful approach to raise the academic approach of our sector.”
The institutions signing on to the Pledge of Public Accountability, as it is being called, include mostly small and some medium-size institutions, and they represent only a fraction of the regionally accredited for-profit colleges.
While the group is small and doesn’t include any of the major for-profit institutions, such as the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, ITT, or DeVry, it is a good start, Mr. Cortes said.
“This is an opportunity to take the lead on student learning, showing that this sector is just as good as the traditional sector,” he said.
