Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy

by Andrew S. Rosen

Proprietary higher education industry leader Andy Rosen discusses how "edupreneurs" are uniquely positioned to educate the nontraditional students shut out of the traditional college experience and are, in the process, preparing America's future workforce, tightening the talent gap, and ensuring our competitive edge in the global marketplace.


Misunderstanding and suspicion of a new sector in higher education is not new. Whenever there has been a true, breakthrough change in American higher education—from the advent of land grant colleges to the introduction of community colleges—there have been detractors lined up against these pioneers.


In Change.edu, Andy Rosen takes on the critics of the for-profit education sector and takes a critical look at the state of higher education in the United States—today’s broad-ranging and tough-to-solve issues; the crisis and questions regarding funding; and who’s really paying for what is at times a subpar learning experience. Rosen, a product of traditional higher education and the CEO of one of the most successful proprietary education companies in the U.S., challenges the status quo and helps re-frame the conversation we (the consumers and taxpayers) should be having about education in this country today.



Not unlike recent indictments on quality and safety issues in the food industry, these problems in higher education impact all of us—direct consumers like students, as well as every taxpayer who indirectly funds non-profit higher education, and even the very businesses hiring undertrained college grads.



Ultimately, Rosen shows how his institution—which uses business metrics and tracks alumni performance to measure success—is unquestionably part of the solution to the challenges facing higher education … and the latest chapter in disruptive innovation in American education.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, Economics, Business

196 pages, ebook

First published October 4, 2011

Reviews

[Joe Sabado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether you agree on the values of for-profit education companies or not, this is a good book to look at higher ed from the perspective of of for-profit leader. What the author points out in this book is that the ideas of land-grant universities, community colleges, just like for-profit education industry also faced oppositions from traditional institutions.

The author acknowledges some of the shortcomings of this industry and he also addresses the common arguments against for-profit education companies.

[Adam Schweigert · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first three chapters and the final chapter are great. The other two chapters just read as an advertisement for for-profit private colleges (Rosen is CEO of Kaplan) and got a little tedious.

[Joe Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Rosen is the CEO of Kaplan, Inc. Most people know of Kaplan through their SAT test preparation materials. Kaplan has been busy diversifying beyond test prep and is now also running Kaplan University, home to 50,000 online students. Andrew has written Change.Edu as an explanation of what he sees wrong with the traditional college experience and what he hopes to accomplish with Kaplan University. He also answers the most common criticisms of for-profit universities.

This is a book that I highly recommend, if you’re interested in where higher education is going and how we can improve educational quality while increasing the number of college graduates, while dealing with bloated government budgets.

The book is clearly laid out, with six main ideas.

Harvard Envy. Rosen calls this the “Ivory Tower Playbook” and says that most universities feel that “the only permissible strategy is to climb the prestige ladder”. Schools are competing with each other to gain prestige, not to deliver an education. This strategy makes sense for the schools but not for society.

Schools spend ever larger amounts of money on buildings, on attracting faculty, and on building better sports teams. Schools also compete for the best and brightest students. The result is that the school itself becomes more prestigious but doesn’t increase the number of students receiving an education and doesn’t even necessarily increase the quality of the education that the lucky students receive.

The end result is that most schools are competing for the best and the brightest students. But no one is competing for the poor student or for the middle-class student that just wants to learn something, without breaking the bank.

Club College. In many ways, this chapter is a continuation of the criticisms of the first chapter. Many universities are focusing their attention—and their budgets—on non-academic areas. In this chapter, Rosen examines the lavish lifestyle that many universities offer to students. From dining options, to living options, to fitness facilities, to sports teams and more, many universities are competing to offer incoming students the most entertaining 4 years possible.

All of these expenditures have nothing to do with academics and everything to do with attracting the most desirable students. Then, after those students graduate, the school can bask in the glow of their famous and accomplished alumni. The alumni, in turn, will look back on their college years with favor, leading to donations, prestige, and word of mouth marketing.

Rosen is careful to point out that there’s nothing wrong with schools wanting to be prestigious or wanting to attract top students. The problem is that schools are spending large amounts of federal, state, and local tax dollars to do so. American taxpayers are paying hundreds of billions of dollars annual to subsidize expenses that have nothing to do with actual learning.

Community Colleges. Theoretically, community colleges are supposed to be the solution to status obsessed or entertainment obsessed schools. They’re supposed to be a low-cost alternative for the masses. Unfortunately, Rosen concludes, they’re failing in their mission.

They run their institutions based on a very different set of conventions—one I think of as the All-Access Playbook: They see their mission as providing an opportunity for everyone.

… Part of the problem with community colleges is the wide variety of goals and missions they are attempting to tackle. “If you visit a four-year college, you can predict what sort of student you are going to bump into,” writes New York Times columnist David Brooks. “If you visit a community college, you have no idea. You might see an immigrant kid hoping eventually to get a PhD, or another kid who messed up in high school and is looking for a second chance. You might meet a 35-year-old former meth addict trying to get some job training or a 50-year-old taking classes for fun.”

The problem is that community colleges are dependent on state and local funding. Often, when students most want access to classes, funding is limited. Many governments can’t afford to increase funding and most community colleges are unable or unwilling to raise tuition to compensate. As a result, community colleges are unable to meet the demand and students are left without options. The “All Access Model” has noble goals but is often unable to meet them.

Private Universities. Rosen presents private, for-profit, universities as the answer to America’s education dilemma. (“How do we educate a large segment of the population efficiently and without bankrupting the nation?”) Private universities are often mocked, but it’s clear that they meet a need for a large number of students.

The largest of the private-sector schools, the University of Phoenix, counted more than four hundred thousand students in 2010, an enrollment larger than the undergraduate enrollment of the entire Big Ten.

He talks about why these schools are popular with both students and employers.

Private-sector schools tend to align their curriculum around those skills that are most needed in the workforce. Many of these institutions have advisory boards that consult with employers to get feedback on what employers want from prospective employees in a given area, and they regularly update their curricula to teach to those skills.

If a school is giving students the knowledge that employers most want to see, employers benefit by having an appropriately skilled workforce available and students benefit by being able to quickly and easily find jobs that utilize their new skills.

He points out that for-profit schools are not a new institution, driven by modern greed.

“The earliest universities in late medieval times were profit-making corporate associations, and the black gowns that professors still wear at graduations and special events have deep pockets into which students in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries deposited their fees,” writes George Keller, an educational historian.

… Viewed in this light, the surge of private-sector colleges over the last generation can be seen less as a new phenomenon taking hold, and more as a long-standing and successful educational model enjoying a renaissance—largely as a result of the unsustainable funding model relied upon by the public institutions that became dominant over the last century.

He points out that for-profit schools receive all of their revenue from student tuition. The only way they can grow, thrive, and survive is to offer students a benefit that’s worth the direct tuition cost. By contrast, “at public universities, where taxpayers bear most of the costs, money from students can account for only 13 percent of the revenue.” As a result, private universities are very responsive to the direct needs of students while public universities can give the impression of being contemptuous of the needs of undergraduate students.

He talks, at length, about the culture and characteristics of private universities. Example: they don’t live on donations, so you’ll never have to worry about being hassled for alumni donations. For another: they don’t focus on the educational inputs (teachers, buildings, libraries, etc). Instead, they focus on the educational outputs (percentage of students who graduate, percentage of graduating students who find work in their major, etc). The result is a university that feels far more focused on education than most public universities do.

He also talks about how the private universities work to standardize their curricula, to ensure that all students receive the same quality education. As a result, their able to identify which teachers need additional help, which teachers need to be fired, and which teachers need raises. They’re also able to quickly identify which students need additional help and how they can best be helped. They can also see when the curriculum itself needs to be revised, in order to better meet the needs of the students and to teach the concepts more clearly.

By standardizing the curriculum, it is possible to measure outcomes and make continuous improvements that will ensure that each term of students is getting a better learning experience than the term before it. Over time, the compounding effect of these steady improvements will be enormous.

Answering the Critics. This chapter was the main reason why I bought this book. Rosen offers an extremely compelling answer to all of the criticisms of for-profit education.

Do for-profit schools waste taxpayer money by encouraging students to sign up for lots of financial aid dollars?

Perhaps the biggest fallacy in the debate over proprietary schools is the argument that the private sector is “wasting” taxpayer money because most of its students make use of federal financial aid programs. In fact, the truth is precisely the reverse: analyses show that private-sector colleges use substantially fewer taxpayer dollars per student than traditional institutions, a gap that widens even further when you measure them apples to apples based on the number of demographically comparable students who actually make it through to graduation. Only by comparing use of federal Title IV student aid dollars in isolation, and ignoring all other governmental contributions to higher education, can one plausibly make the case that private-sector colleges over consume taxpayer dollars.

Do for-profit schools suck up large amounts of taxpayer money?

… And when it comes to direct support—government money contributed directly to institutions, as opposed to student financial aid that is based on where an individual student goes to school—the difference is even starker. “For every $1 in direct support for private for-profit institutions, per student, at federal, state and local levels, private not-for-profit institutions receive $8.69 per student and public institutions receive $19.38 per student.”

Do for-profit schools lead students to amass large debts and then default on them?

… [S]tudies have shown that nonprofit schools that also serve nontraditional student populations have nearly identical default rates, and that students’ socioeconomic level is by far the dominant driver of defaults. There is a very high (91 percent) correlation between institutional default rates and the percentage of low-income, Pell Grant students at an institution.

Do for-profit schools sucker students into taking classes that they won’t benefit from?

At Kaplan, we’ve gone a step further by making the first weeks of school “risk free.” Kaplan assesses students during the first month of each program and determines whether they evidence the ability and rigor to succeed; if not, they are asked to withdraw, without any tuition owed or debt incurred. And any student who finds that the real experience during that period does not match his or her expectations for any reason can choose to withdraw, similarly without tuition obligation. A large percentage of those who drop out do so in the first term; the “Kaplan Commitment” leaves most of these students with no debt at all.

The Learning Playbook. Rosen concludes with a look at how standardized curricula, online learning, and the lack of prestigious campuses could transform the face of American education. More students could receive a better education, at a lower cost. If he’s right, the future is very bright. And I think he’s right.

[Brendan Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides an interesting new perspective on the higher education system. It provides a lot of good arguments for the merit of for-profit schools and the like. Interesting read.

[Amir · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Mr. Rosen book both insightful and thought provoking. In his book, Mr. Rosen highlights what he believes are some of the drawbacks and challenges facing both non-profit education universities and public community colleges, as well as breaking some of the myths surrounding for-profit schools. One might assume that the author will be biased toward for profit education institutions (Mr. Rosen is the Chairman and CEO of Kaplan Inc.), however, I have found it not to be the case.

The book starts with the history of education in the USA. I found it fascinating to learn about the early days of the land-grant colleges and some of the bias against their low admission standards and their government funding. Of course one should remember that Cornell and Berkley were originally a land-grant colleges, I would assume that today no one would dispute their importance in the education of many students and the major innovation that sprang from these universities. Time will tell if any of the current for-profit schools will rival the likes of Berkley with their innovation and the success of their students.

Mr. Rosen continues with describing some of the short falls of our current top education institutions, the resort like colleges, the utilization time of the students in today’s top colleges. One study that is quoted in the book is quite compelling. The study suggests that the average student spend 2.9 hours a day on education while at the same time the average student spends 4.5 hours a day on “Leisure and Sports”. All this happens at times of an ever growing tuition (and other) fees. While reading, I found myself pondering. What is the goal of our education colleges and universities? Is it to teach or to entertain? And what is the goal of the student and his parents when signing up for a 4 year degree? Not an easy question to answer.

The book continues in exploring some of the short coming of our community college, admittedly a very good idea, however with funding constraints and other described limitations it can not answer all our countryman and countrywomen education needs.

The second part of the book describes the evolution of private for-profit colleges and the differentiating characteristics of the schools, the students and the operations. Mr. Rosen describes the leaders of the new type of schools and their background. The reader should ask himself, is there any other place for a 30+ year old person to get a four year education without stopping his current work and family obligations?

Although I do not agree with all of Mr. Rosen’s points with regards to the taxpayer cost comparing non-profit, public and for-profit schools, I do appreciate laying it out as a counter view to the case against private sector higher education. Mr. Rosen goes on and provides his point of view with regards to other biases and myths against the private sector institutions.

I think Mr. Rosen was a bit light on describing the reasons for some of the aggressive tactics that schools used to recruit students, however he does admit to the fact that “There are cases where overaggressive recruitment has taken place”.

I think that some of it has to do (as anything else in life) with a wrong incentive systems to the recruiters, but only time will tell if changing the incentives will prevent some of the overaggressive tactics.

For years now people have compared the results of students at the different type of education institutions, but is it a fair comparison? Can you compare an 18 year old university automat (more in the book) to a part time single parent student? And if this comparison is not fair how do you still measure the success of the schools?

I found Mr. Rosen statistics and explanations about using similar type of students when comparing education success (or failure) very interesting and valuable, I do wish that more will be written about better ways to measure success. This comparison begs the very hard question, is everyone can comply with the requirements of a 4 year degree, and if not what can be done to help the ones that want it but do not have the skills / tool set to achieve it?

In conclusion I would highly recommend Mr. Rosen’s book Change. Edu to any student, educator, community leader and all who wish like to learn more about our current education landscape, the challenges we face and the future opportunities.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the most important book on higher education in the past few years, but sadly those who need to read it the most will quickly dismiss it. Here in Pennsylvania, folks are furious that the Commonwealth is not sending more money to the State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). Of all the things taxpayer money is spent on, should education be one of the most important. Of course, but how is each school spending that money? If higher education is being subsidized by people who have nothing to do with it, shouldn't there be some expectation of appropriate use of that money? It a waterfall wall in the dining hall really worth it? At this point in time, are athletics?

Andrew Rosen calls a spade a spade in this book, and argues that that there are many paths for individuals in higher education. The current models just aren't cutting it for providing affordable, quality access to all, and private-sector (aka: "for-profit") education offers another way. Rosen counters many of the arguments against private-sector schools while challenging assumptions about the traditional models.

Higher education is on a collision course with reality. There is a bubble and the burst is coming. Students in $60,000+ debt for a philosophy degree working at Starbucks. Taxpayers funding 14 athletic programs throughout the state. Students after four years not being able to demonstrate what they have learned. As Rosen says, Harvard will always be Harvard. But why is everyone else trying to be Harvard? We say we value diversity, but where is the diversity in instruction? Changes are coming, and many schools that don't adapt will fall by the wayside.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Harvard envy...Rosen says community colleges are immune but I think he misses the boat on this.

Great quote from senator Morrill...."These people snatch their education, such as it is, from the crevices between labor and sleep. They grope in twilight".

Rosen argues that many students who don't complete are actually WORSE off than b4 higher Ed....I have said this for the longest time!

I noted in chapter one that his concept of institutional ego reminded me of Moneyball (i.e. Replacing Giambi and Damon).

"Every time a college tries to do something to enhance it's prestige, it's creating an opening for a disruptive entrant to make a play for the students it is overshooting".

Argues that colleges are fighting for more prestige instead of more learning, and fighting for the same pool of students (mostly automatics). And all paid for by taxpayers.

We all need to focus on our core students instead of the students we wish we had.

A fancy kitchen doesn't make you a good cook. Better facilities don't necessarily lead to more learning.

Argues public higher eds funding model is broken. Too diversified and draws focus away from students. Tuition driven model compels focus on student learning.

Higher Ed focused too much on inputs instead of outcomes.....great analogy....drivers license. An outsider determines if you are qualified to drive.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book offered amazing insights into the changing landscape of higher education. Rosen examines the rise of land-grant universities and community colleges, and explains the resistance to those movements when they first emerged. Put into this perspective, the rise of for-profits continues the tradition of "disruptive" higher education.

The book is well-researched and supported. Yes, Rosen is president of Kaplan, Inc., and the book was published by Kaplan Publishing. He's clearly an advocate for for-profit education, but his stance at all times is clear, well-detailed, and researched. This is not simply an opinion piece. The book is a high-quality examination of higher education today.

I hope everyone involved in higher education--whether at public schools, private schools, proprietary schools, community colleges, etc.--will read this book. I have experience working at both a public university and a for-profit university. I would love to engage in conversation with others who read this book.

Bottom line, my perspective on higher education changed because of this book.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite well written and moves at a nice pace with a good voice. Also involves some actual vignettes set on campuses, which are nice. And the last chapter on higher ed and its future is interesting and thoughtful. My bigger annoyance is that the middle part of the book reads like an add for for-profit education in a way that made the book seem to have more of an agenda than a thought piece. It also repeats the incorrect comparison around graduation rates that the sector constantly makes and is always wrong. But that said, it's quick read and its chapters on traditional ed are good distillations of the general reform higher ed narrative.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wrote out a long detailed review of this book, and then Goodreads had a derpy moment, so suffice it to say that Rosen has a compelling argument for his criticism of the traditional public and private university system. His suggestion that the for-profit schools (such as Kaplan, of which he is the chairman) serve to complement the offerings of community colleges and other technical colleges needs further investigation from a truly objective author, but he certainly has some arguments.

[Meepspeeps · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every legislator should read this book, no matter how elitist their world view. He makes excellent arguments for for-profit education and major re-working of traditional postsecondary education, especially toward more standardized measurement of learning outcomes. He misses the mark on the importance of research on college campuses (a second main reason to exist besides learning), but overall I enjoyed his predictions of the future of postsecondary education.

[Kristina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having taught in higher education for 18 years, this book held huge appeal to me in the examination of trends in recruiting, curriculum offerings and the overall landscape of traditional brick and mortar campuses in comparison to the rise of online schools. Well worth reading...

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a supporter of for profit institutions of higher education, but admit that there are parts of their business structures from which the non profit industry could learn. This was a good read, although I became less interested in the latter half, which felt more like an advertisement.

[Brendan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Good if you've already read ' How Colleges Work '.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on higher education from the founder of Kaplan. Examining all different venues, considering "automatics", the spending on real estate, buildings vs. lower tuition.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't agree with everything he says, but it is a good read and quite interesting