Jeff Wendt interviews Robert Tucker of InterEd, who says that - to him - it is seems that the Department of Education has decided that for-profits are an impediment. Tucker has some interesting ideas and perspectives.

[T]he flaws in the Department of Education's regulatory formulation are critical. ED's disclosures tell prospective students who are interested in certain applied degree programs that their degree, earned at a particular institution, is likely to land them the job they seek. However, they are told nothing about time and cost to degree. There is no mention of the opportunity costs of delays. There are no requirements for disclosure if the school is non-profit. Meanwhile, in addition to the possible outcome, does it matter what the buyer may want during the actual educational experience — facilities, amenities, fellowship and a host of other considerations? ...

A one-year delay to degree is typical among public colleges and universities. It can cost the student foregone earnings of say $40,000, plus extra tuition, plus possible additional downstream costs. Such transparent disclosures could eliminate the need for unintelligent regulation and expensive compliance. Since a consumer is likely to be shopping throughout the higher education marketplace for himself and family members, this disclosure, as well as all the others, should apply throughout the marketplace, regardless of the corporate charter of the education provider.

A year or two ago, we heard a lot about community colleges students possibly being prepared for green jobs that would never come, or come too late. Now, "Dead Dad," poses the question, "Should community colleges spend resources on training people to work for dying industries?"

On one side is the perfectly valid argument that students need jobs now, not years from now, and there’s an inherent difficulty (if not arrogance) in trying to read the future. While some broad, system-level trends may be legible, they don’t necessarily tell you what will happen in any given local market, or with any given company. Even if, say, manufacturing is on the decline nationally, that doesn’t mean that every single manufacturing company will either go under or go overseas. And if a few of the survivors are local, why the hell not prepare students for them?

But then there’s bitter experience. Having gone to grad school in an evergreen discipline in the 90’s, I saw and experienced firsthand the frustration of doing everything right only to emerge with a credential nobody wants. Having grown up in a city that’s still paying the price for putting so many eggs in the basket of a single industry, only to wind up with egg on its face, I’m a little nervous about pretending not to notice industrial decline. As late as the 90’s, the American car industry was doing great, riding the wave of SUV’s (and the undercurrent of cheap gas) as far as it could go. We know how that turned out, and it’s not like nobody saw it coming.