Senator Dick Durbin at the National Press Club

According to this Chicago Tribune article, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois is speaking out against for-profit universities like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, and Illinois-based DeVry University.

In recent remarks at the National Press Club, the Senator says that these schools burden students with debt, make money essentially from the Federal government’s loans, and don’t help students get good-paying jobs.

He gives the following example:  a woman who received her bachelor’s and masters degrees online — “without ever having to step foot in a classroom” –  is now carrying $110,000 in debt, but can’t repay it because she is working for a nonprofit that helps poor children.

The Senator called the online degrees “worthless” and said tighter regulation of for-profit schools is needed. As the article says, he “did not single out any one bad practice” from the schools, but is instead opposed, it would seem, to their reliance on loans from the Federal government.

The article does not comment on how the woman found her job or what it entails.

Many for-profit  schools do make money based on student loans funded by the government. Of course, many students can also attend private nonprofit schools only because of help from the government. And because public schools are by definition public, they too are funded to a large degree by the government (state and Federal). The question comes down to one of purpose.

Is the purpose of the for-profit schools to make education accessible to people who would normally not receive it, and then to reinvest profits into new technologies and faculty? Or, as the Senator says, are they forgetting their purpose and instead thinking only of profit?

A few other questions that the Senator’s remarks bring to mind: is regulating for-profit schools the answer to the problem of debt? Are for-profit schools the only schools to give out “worthless” degrees? How does one really define “worthiness” in the first place?