Lessons from the Edge: For-Profit and Nontraditional Higher Education in America

by Gary A. Berg

The importance of for-profit higher education becomes clear when one examines the state of higher education today. Traditional institutions are facing major pressures, including diminishing financial support, a call to serve adult learners, the need to balance applied and liberal arts curricula, and the need to maintain and evolve the institutional mission. Stakeholders are more numerous than ever before, and they are pulling institutions in different directions. Traditional higher education institutions are increasingly pressured to alter their missions because diminished public funding has resulted in dependence on donors and corporations with varied interests. This strain is causing universities to behave in new ways. For-profit institutions provide a model of how to handle these challenges by their very structure. They are constructed specifically to meet the needs of adult learners, and the core of their mission--to help adult and traditionally underserved students--is constant and clear.

Genres: Education

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Gary A. Berg, PhD, MFA is the author and/or editor of twelve non-fiction books including the forthcoming Transformative Arts: Biological, Digital and Everyday Aesthetics (Rowman & Littlefield).