Setting Standards - 100 Years of Accredited Career Education

CONTENTS Forward Acknowledgements Chapter 1 A Century of Change: Accreditation for a Better Future

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John D. Rockefeller FOUNDING MEMBER: Boyles Business College, Omaha, Nebraska

14 15

Humble Roots, High Aspirations

16

Wallace Hume Carothers FOUNDING MEMBER: Elliott Commercial College, Wheeling, West Virginia

25 27

Growth and Transformation: Adapting to a Changing World

28

Annie Harper Jones FOUNDING MEMBER: Jamestown Business College, Jamestown, New York

37 39

Workforce in Flux

40

Ron K. Bailey

50 51

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

FOUNDING MEMBER:

Chapter 5

Public Good, Private Initiative

52

Joseph W. Fehrer

61 62

FOUNDING MEMBER:

Chapter 6

Chapter 8

Miami-Jacobs Career College, Dayton, Ohio

Federal Largess for all Post-secondary Institutions

64

Larry McMurtry

73 75

FOUNDING MEMBER:

Chapter 7

Lincoln Business College, Lincoln, Nebraska

Miller School of Business, New York, New York

Better Access, Tighter Policy

76

Senator Paul Simon Jim Phillips and Steve Parker FOUNDING MEMBER: Spencerian Commercial School, Louisville, Kentucky

87 88 89

Prosperity and Disparity of Opportunity

90

Brice Phillips FOUNDING MEMBER:

Chapter 9

102 103

Policy, Politics at Dawn of New Millennium

104

Dana R. Hart

116 117

FOUNDING MEMBER:

Chapter 10

Duff’s College, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Northwestern Business College, Chicago, Illinois

Accrediting Career Education’s Past, Present and Future

118

Caroline Nestmann Peck Janice Parker FOUNDING MEMBER: Waterloo College, Waterloo, Iowa

126 127 129

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Appendix A President/Chair of the Board Appendix B Chair of Accrediting Commission/Council Appendix C Chief Executives Appendix D Founding Members, December 12, 1912 Appendix E Members of the Centennial Century Club Appendix F Recipients of the Commission’s/Council’s Evaluator Awards Appendix G ACICS Directory of Accredited Institutions Endnotes Picture Credits Index

132 134 135 136 137 138 139 149 153 155

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FORWARD The history of ACICS and its predecessor organizations spans 100 years in the United States, directly illustrating the impetus for self-governance and voluntary quality assurance that came from the owners and operators of private career colleges and schools. While the history describes many aspects of an evolving, national organization with many functions related to membership, the core enterprise was and is the assurance of educational quality and the preservation of institutional integrity. As is the case for all accredited institutions of higher learning in the U.S., the accreditation of career colleges and schools under the imprimatur of ACICS relies on the review of peers by peers. It assumes that no one is better suited to evaluate the quality and suďŹƒciency of an educational program than the professionals who develop, deliver, operate and manage career education programs at other institutions. This is their story.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This reflection on the first 100 years of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools would not have been possible without the generous and informed support of a number of key individuals who gave their time and thoughtful consideration during interviews and exchanges of correspondence. They represent some of the most knowledgeable sources of information about ACICS, career education and the discipline of peer-reviewed quality assurance. They are George Blount, Joyce Caton, Rene Champaign, Tom Duff, Stephen and Jan Friedheim, Al Gray, Jim Hutton, David Hyslop, Dean Johnston, Don Jones, Joe Lee, John Lee, Larry Luing, Scott Ober, Janice Parker, Al Sullivan, Roger Swartzwelder and Bill Winger. Deep appreciation as well to the Centennial Steering Committee, Jill DeAtley, Gary Carlson, Scott Rhude, Matt Johnston, Jamie Morley and Tom Duff. Finally, recognition is in order for the 2012 ACICS Council and Board for exerting leadership and support to this commemorative endeavor.

The authors and editors of “Setting Standards.”

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Preparing for the Future: Students enrolled in a shorthand class, Atchison Business College, Atchison, Kansas, April 11, 1888.

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CHAPTER 1 A Century of Change: Accreditation for a Better Future Welcome to the Centennial Year of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS). One hundred years have passed since the founding of the antecedent organization, the National Association of Accredited Commercial Schools. For higher education, the centennial year may not be the best of times or the worst of times, but they are certainly very interesting times.

The demand to achieve a college degree has never been higher. Yet the pressure on higher education to justify itself, both in terms of costs and outcomes, has never been greater.

In the midst of conicting ideas and strong opinions, accreditation stands like a beacon. Lighting the way forward. Charting standards of practice. DeďŹ ning ethical conduct. Assuring institutional and academic quality. Protecting students, employers and taxpayers. In sum, helping colleges and universities navigate a surer path to a better future.

This is the story of how ACICS has evolved to serve this series of high purposes during 100 years of practice. With nearly 1,000 accredited institutions serving almost 1,000,000 students, ACICS is a lead accrediting agency in career education today.

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THIS BOOK

recounts how the high-minded concerns of a handful of school owners meeting in a Chicago hotel room at the start of the twentieth century have led to a voluntary, selfgoverning system that draws on the participation of hundreds of peer evaluators, conducting scores of onsite evaluations yearly. In doing so, it recalls the pioneers and recognizes the contributions of present day practitioners. This narrative describes how the accrediting process itself has grown and changed over time. And it explains how accreditation weaves an important safety net for all stakeholders, an assurance of quality that undergirds the assertions of particular institutions with fact-based, peer-driven inquiry and empirical evidence.

ACICS accreditation is a living process, but no process exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, during the last 100 years, the education leaders who built the institution that ultimately became ACICS were buffeted by powerful winds of change— headwinds that at times challenged the very commercial and academic viability of the career education sector itself. No tableau of accreditation would be complete without pulling the narrative back to consider these larger forces. Nor can any real appreciation of ACICS and its builders be had without viewing the challenge through this wider lens. Thus this book celebrates the Centennial Year by oering a look back at people and events. But it is also puts the push behind rigorous

Winds of Change: Career schools have responded quickly to changes in business methods and technological innovations throughout the last 100 years: A typing class at Jacobs Business College in 1907. (Now Miami-Jacobs Career College, Dayton, Ohio.)

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accreditation of career education into focused on the question of admissions its historical context and shows how standards.2 the importance of this mission continRegional associations helped to ues to the present day. rationalize, systematize and standardize what constituted higher education EARLY ROLE OF at the turn of the century. Also pushing ACCREDITATION for order in an otherwise unruly marAlthough the roots of accreditation ketplace were industrialists like Andrew may seem as deeply embedded in the Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller, soil of American higher education as who used philanthropic fundraising the oldest of colleges and universi- as a mechanism for setting standards ties themselves, this is not the case. on those post-secondary institutions On the contrary, accreditation of considered worthy of receiving their post-secondary institutions in this largess. Money worked. Admissions country began in the late nineteenth requirements tightened. College century, driven largely by the frustra- finances were improved. Salaries tion of secondary schools attempt- increased. Philanthropic giving became ing to prepare their students to meet the carrot that led to significant postthe divergent and often conflicting secondary reform and the adoption 3 admissions requirements of various of standards. Accreditation became, colleges and universities. Other cir- if not the stick, the widely respected cumstances of the day added to the mechanism for assuring adherence to 4 confusion. Some institutions, for a standards-based approach. instance, operated at both the secondary and post-secondary level, clouding differences between the two. Other “colleges,” true colleges in name only, simply taught a secondary rather than post-secondary course of study.1 From conflict came consensus, first in the form of the College Entrance Examination Board, and then followed by regional college associations

So even in its infancy, accreditation in America was subject to strong forces both from within and without. In that sense, nothing has changed. In recent times, accreditation has been the subject of Congressional hearings and inquiries, while accrediting agencies themselves have deliberated internally whether their

processes and methods have adapted appropriately to the changes in the higher education.

ACICS: ADVANCING CAREER EDUCATION Today, ACICS brings rigorous scrutiny to the institutional oversight of its member schools. The organization’s mission is to advance educational excellence at independent, nonpublic career schools, colleges, and organizations in the United States and abroad. This mission is achieved through a deliberate and thorough accreditation process of quality assurance and enhancement as well as ethical business and educational practices.

In essence, “accreditation” is a formal, systematic process of institutional performance appraisal. Voluntary self-regulation, regular peer review, and an on-going commitment to educational excellence are central tenants of the ACICS creed. ACICS member institutions believe that such an approach to accreditation, educational oversight and quality assurance is far superior to that which can be imposed from the outside. History supports that premise.

…accreditation … is an assurance of quality that undergirds the assertions of particular institutions with fact-based, peer-driven inquiry and empirical evidence.

A Century of Change: Accreditation for a Better Future

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Council Meeting, ACICS headquarters, Washington, D.C., 2011.

Officially recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a national institutional accrediting body in 1956 and re-recognized every five years since then, the federal government relies on ACICS quality determinations of its accredited schools to safeguard the distribution of student aid funds. Similarly, state governments rely on the review actions of ACICS and other accrediting agencies for sound funding and licensure decisions and thereby as a mechanism

to help protect consumers. ACICS accreditation reassures employers that graduates of ACICS accredited institutions have received a quality education, and students attending such schools that their institution offers the same.

Collectively, the U.S. Department of Education, state higher education commissions, and accrediting agencies like ACICS form the “Triad” of higher education oversight.

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ORGANIZATION, STRUCTURE AND OPERATIONS

As with other professions like engineering, law and medicine, the education professionals who compose the ACICS membership firmly believe that no group is better positioned In pursuing its mission, ACICS to judge the career education sector does not seek to stifle innovation or than the sector itself. ACICS accreditation is first and foremost a member-driven activity: peers reviewing the performance and outcomes of peers.

Accreditation … can also serve institutions as an important source of expert guidance, insight and inspiration from sector peers.

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curtail diversity in educational curricula or delivery systems. Accreditation is an important check on compliance with predefined standards and rules, but it can also serve institutions as an important source of expert guidance, insight and inspiration from sector peers. No post-secondary institution is perfect; all have deficiencies and areas for continuous improvement. ACICS accreditation consists of an extensive body of standards, applied through a robust program of scrutiny by peers, for both review and remediation of problem areas. Thus there are two sides to the accreditation coin—compliance and improvement—and to over value one is to under value the other.

A Board of Directors manages and directs the business and financial affairs of ACICS, overseeing the work of the professional and administrative staff, while the Council is responsible for accreditation standards, Pages 7-103 are not included in this preview.

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CHAPTER 9 Policy, Politics at Dawn of New Millennium “At this very critical moment, federal higher education policy has turned a page.”1 So said Terry Hartle, Senior Vice President for Government and Public Affairs at the American Council on Education. The moment to which Hartle referred was the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee in August 2009.

For private sector colleges and universities, Kennedy’s death both turned a page and opened a difficult new chapter in the sector’s history. Kennedy had long recognized the role of proprietary schools in helping the most disadvantaged Americans gain access to higher education. He was also adept at keeping issues in perspective and not allowing the missteps of a few to be become representative of the many.

This was no more clearly demonstrated than when the Reagan administration introduced a plan to expel schools from Title IV federal student aid programs with greater than a 20 percent student loan default rate. In a 1987 Senate hearing, Kennedy challenged Education Secretary William J. Bennett over the prevalence of bad actors within the ranks of business and trade schools.

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“WE’RE MOVING

the desired effect and screened out the worst actors. And he understood the sector educated those who could find no place in traditional higher education. He, therefore, was willing to be reasonable and support at critical times legislation that was extremely important for lower income students.

However, with his support came Addressing Bennett directly, expectations that the schools would Kennedy said, “If you’ve got evidence improve not just access, but outcomes for students.” for that, let’s have it, Mr. Secretary.”2 Sadly, exaggeration, anecdote and Harris Miller, former president of the Career College Association (CCA) innuendo would eventually trump and the Association of Private Sector careful discourse and thoughtful delibColleges and Universities (APSCU), eration. In the depths of a prolonged worked with Kennedy from 2007 on. economic recession during 2009, year-round enrollment at career colHe recalls: leges accounted for 12 percent of “Senator Kennedy asked tough all post-secondary enrollments. The but fair questions about private sec- growth attracted plenty of attention. tor colleges and universities. By the Within a year of Kennedy’s death, mid-2000’s, he believed that many of private sector colleges and univerthe reforms of the sector that he had sities were under strenuous attack helped legislate, with Secretary of from numerous quarters, including Education Bill Bennett, had produced the media, plaintiff’s attorneys, Wall Street short-sellers, state attorneys general in a small number of states, consumer and higher education policy advocates, and, most notably, in the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee of the U.S. Senate. in on the most vulnerable young people in our society,” Kennedy said. “Now what we hear is we’re going to save all these kids because we’ve got these hucksters that are there pulling kids out of unemployment lines, throwing them into proprietary school, trying to make a buck.”

ADVENT OF GAO SECRET SHOPPING

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Chair of Senate H.E.L.P. Committee, 2001–2003 and 2007–2009.

In August 2010, the Government Accountability Office released the results of an undercover investigation into deceptive marketing practices, claiming misrepresentation at 15 forprofit schools. The report drove

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headlines, although it was later revised to correct significant inaccuracies.

At the same time, attorneys general from ten states appeared to be gearing up for a large scale inquiry into private post-secondary education, and the attorneys general for Illinois and Kentucky filed individual lawsuits. And the Department of Education stepped up its own efforts at oversight, issuing new regulations in October 2010, in such areas as incentive compensation for marketing and recruitment, misrepresentations, and credit hour awards (a final regulation introducing a complicated formula to define the phrase “gainful employment” followed in June 2011).

For accrediting agencies themselves, questions about the quality and value of for-profit education culminated in a Committee hearing held on March 10, 2011.

“It seems that many of these forprofit education companies are becoming multi-state corporations, and their main focus is becoming their bottom line rather than their students,” said HELP Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA). “In their current state, are our accreditation agencies equipped to oversee billion-dollar, multi-state corporations?”

Senator Harkin answered his own question, promising legislation aimed

Students at Sanford-Brown Institute, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

at reforming regulatory oversight of the for-profit education sector.

Years earlier, Congress explicitly authorized the Department of Education to be the enforcement agency for wrong-doing involving federal student aid programs. Yet the accrediting agencies were taking the rap for failing to police the government’s regulations.

Critics of accreditation generally focused their complaints in several areas: • The peer review process and the ability of schools to control assessments; • The lack of public members in the accreditation evaluation process; • The lack of willingness to investigate and punish poorly performing schools; • The reliance of accrediting agencies on their dues paying members; • Low standards of educational quality generally; • Accreditation venue hopping to find the lowest acceptable standards or to avoid sanction; • Schools purchasing other schools to acquire regional accreditation, particularly for institutions engaged in large-scale distance education; • The inability of students to transfer credits from nationally to regionally accredited schools • The rejection of nationally accredited school awards by employers or professional groups and the view that national accreditation is somehow less rigorous or robust than regional accreditation

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With so many issues raised, is the system for assuring post-secondary quality and integrity broken? Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a former Secretary of Education, speaking at a HELP Committee hearing in 2010, put private post-secondary education and accreditation into perspective. He warned lawmakers of the dangers of “shooting quail with a cannon.”

“We’ve got 6,000 higher education institutions in the country,” Alexander said. “They are the best system in the world altogether…It’s one of the things that the U.S. does well. The reason is that they are autonomous. People have a choice in those institutions. They can go to Nashville Auto Diesel College President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, July 24, 2009. or they can go to Harvard or they can go to the University of Iowa, wherever they choose to go. The money follows them. Whenever that happens, you have problems as we’ve seen today.”

Alexander recommended that the government isolate bad actors among institutions by working with accrediting bodies.3

PEER REVIEW OR FEDERAL GOVERNMENT: WHICH IS THE AUTHORITY ON QUALITY? The possibility of federal government encroachment into a more prescriptive type of oversight drew an open letter to Senator Harkin from Dr. Judith Eaton, President of Senator Lamar Alexandar during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) the Council for Higher Education Committee hearing about for-profit education, June 24, 2010.

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Accreditation (CHEA). Following on the heels of the HELP Committee’s March 2011 hearing, Dr. Eaton wrote, “How did we move so quickly from identification of a modest number of concerns to a wholesale condemnation of the accreditation enterprise? How is this judgment warranted? While we must address the concerns that have been raised, are we on a path that could, at the same time, significantly diminish the value of accreditation to students, society and government?”

Dr. Judith Eaton, President of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)

system that works. She noted, however, that accreditor judgment is being “augmented or supplanted by government judgment.” The government, she said, is moving from its position of assuring that accrediting bodies have standards to a position of both determining what the standards should be and deciding how they should be carried out.

While critics of the peer review process point to the potential for conflict of interest in school experts judging each other’s schools, the reality is that profesIn defending peer review, Dr. Eaton sions of every type rely on peer review said in her letter that “deference to to determine quality and proficiency. professional judgment of quality” is a Earlier in his career, Dr. Albert C. Gray,

Commissioners and ACICS staff at work during a Council Meeting. Institutions go through an extensive peer review process before they are approved for a grant of accreditation. The process includes a self-study, an onsite evaluation team visit and report, assessment by the Intermediate Review Committee, file review by the Council, pictured above, and a final decision by the full 15 member Council (2011).

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important safeguard of quality and integrity. Public members serve on the Council Board, Intermediate Review Committee and on evaluation teams. In terms of evaluation team make-up and credibility, ACICS teams are usually chaired by public members and the number of public members included on a team often exceeds Department of Education requirements.

Dr. Albert C. Gray speaks at the 2011 ACICS Annual Meeting, Grapevine, Texas.

Executive Director and CEO of ACICS, established the accreditation process for public health agencies across the country. A licensed civil and environmental engineer, Dr. Gray said peer review is a basic concept in most fields of professional endeavor. He dismissed conflict of interest as a major concern, explaining that peers have a responsibility to set a high, not a low, bar. “By doing so, they elevate their own stature,” Dr. Gray said. “It is inherently disadvantageous to allow institutions to be accredited that do not meet the standard.”

Accreditation for higher education is, then, a peer review process based on continuous process improvement.

Dr. James Hutton, Owner, Hutton Education, former ACICS Council Chairman, makes a distinction between

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stronger rules for enforcement and stronger assessment. “ACICS is not supposed to be able to do a program review,” he said. Dr. Hutton noted that certified public accountants, not accreditors, audit the financial records and financial aid records of higher education institutions. This audit process, not accreditation, is designed to identify and report fraud and abuse.

Public member participation in the ACICS accreditation is another

Public members are professionals from outside the private post-secondary sector and hold expertise in school administration, business education or specialized technical subject areas.

Public members add balance to and serve as a check on potential conflicts of interest or other ethical lapses. Being more familiar with the day to day operations of a career college, team evaluators from inside the sector may have a different view of “business as usual.”

This synthesis of inside and outside points of view is most likely to assure quality education for students.

Bias, of course, is not the logical result of objective inquiry. For instance, the view that national accreditation is less rigorous than regional accreditation is not supported by facts. Both national accreditation agencies like ACICS and the regional accrediting bodies undergo the same recognition process by the

Public members add balance to and serve as a check on potential conflicts of interest or other ethical lapses.

Pages 111-115 are not included in this preview.

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DANA R. HART

Although Dana R. Hart did not live a long life, he made a lasting contribution to ACICS and business education.

In a summary, Fulton said of Hart, “He wanted the Accrediting Commission to be a fair and practical organization, engaged in achieving practical ends, for real people, who sometimes were in real trouble.”5

A Texas native, Hart joined the Association of Independent Colleges and Schools staff in 1956 and became executive secretary of the Accrediting Commission in 1969.

His leadership helped expand the role of accreditation in proprietary education.

In a tribute to Hart in 1977, AICS Executive Director Richard Fulton called his late colleague’s decision to relocate the Commission to Washington, D.C. and to modernize its procedures “a turning point in the course of ever increasing acceptance of AICS accreditation.”

To Fulton, Hart was a truly fair, decent person, while still being tough enough to stand up to the pressures of his job. While association politics swirled around him, Fulton said Hart remained focused on the ability of schools to serve students and the quality of the education being provided.

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Hart was a graduate of Texas Wesleyan College, where he also served as athletic director and basketball coach. He later earned a master’s degree at North Texas State University.6

Hart brought these qualities with him to Capitol Hill, serving as what Fulton termed “a first rate witness.” Fulton recalled that during the years when the whole system of accreditation was under attack, [Hart’s] “steady, unequivocal response to a Congressional question both justified the AICS conceptual position and exposed but gently and without basis for offense the non-comprehension of the examiner.”

Hart later served as vice president and manager of Draughon Business, owned by Texas Wesleyan College. Texas Wesleyan named Hart its alumnus of the year in 1961. A World War II veteran, Hart was awarded the Purple Heart for a combat wound suffered at the Battle of the Bulge.

AICS established the Dana R. Hart Memorial Research Grant in 1977 to “stimulate, encourage and reward outstanding contributions to the field of proprietary business education.7

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Founding Member

Northwestern Business College, Chicago, Illinois

N

orthwestern Business College was established in Chicago in 1902 by J.F. Fish. It was not unusual in those days for a young man to start a school for the teaching of typing and shorthand. Chicago alone had 75. However, one aspect was unique: the previous year, Fish had gone blind. The trouble started in 1899. Fish was on his honeymoon at the family homestead in Mount Vernon, Ohio, when he was struck by a falling tree. His optic nerves were paralyzed in the freak accident. By 1901 his sight was completely gone.

For many people, such a devastating injury could have proven ruinous. Not for Fish. He proved to be both an able school administrator and a leader of the private school sector, leading the National Commercial Teachers Federation and serving as vice president of the National Association of Accredited Commercial Schools, forerunner of ACICS. Northwestern Business College became a founding member of NAACS in 1912.

The disability failed to sap his prodigious energies in other areas.

Fish worked on prestigious federal Bureau of Education committees with the likes of Stanford University’s Leland Stanford Jr. and Cyrus McCormick of International Harvester.

The Fish story took another dramatic turn in 1930. After running the Northwestern Business College with his wife for almost 30 years, Fish regained his lost eyesight. The remarkable recovery was reported by newspapers across the country. A modern day Gulliver, in these accounts Fish described his wonder at the changed Chicago cityscape and its people since he had last seen them at the turn of the century.

Mrs. Fish, having grown matronly in the intervening 30 years, must have demonstrated great fortitude when Mr. Fish told readers of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “Now that God has given me back my sight I have found a new and very kindly woman, one I can recognize best by pressing back her cheeks until she seems the same slender girl she was before I was blinded.”

One of the sights Fish found most amazing was the fast moving automobiles. Sadly, he would himself be involved in an extremely serious car accident in 1937, after which he retired from school ownership.

Fish sold his school to Myrtle M. Voss, who operated Voss Business College in Chicago’s Loop. In 1958 Violet Schumacher, a former Northwestern Business College student, purchased the school. At that time, the school had 60 students. In addition to attending Northwestern, Violet had worked there in the 1940s, rising from receptionist to director. In 1977, Violet Schumacher sold the institution to Lancelot Inc., owned by her children Lawrence W. Schumacher and Nancy Schumacher Kucienski.

During this period, the institution greatly expanded its focus beyond traditional business subjects.

Lawrence Schumacher, a former ACICS Commissioner, became the sole owner of the school in 2007. In 2008, Northwestern Business College changed its name to Northwestern College, better reflecting the diversity of its program offerings.

The school received degree granting status by the Illinois Board of Higher Education in 1973 and was accredited by the Accrediting Commission of the Association of Independent Colleges and Schools in the same year. In the 1990s, Northwestern received accreditation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Today, Northwestern is the oldest privately owned business college in Chicago, and maintains campuses in Chicago, Bridgeview and Naperville, Illinois. The institution maintains an enrollment of approximately 2000 students. Two year and certificate programs include accounting, information technology, paralegal services, hospitality, medical assisting and travel.

He may not have helped matters when she asked, “Do I look old and wrinkled and gray?” and he answered, “No more than I do.”

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For 100 years ACICS accreditation has assured institutional and academic quality, helped colleges and universities navigate a surer path to a better future, and worked to improve the educational opportunities for millions of students.

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CHAPTER 10 Accrediting Career Education’s Past, Present and Future In the midst of current controversies, ground truth prevails. Career education is more important today than ever and accredited career colleges are best able to provide it.

Why is career education more important than ever?

Ground truth: the “race of life” does not place every runner at the same starting line. With widely diverging backgrounds, life experiences and personal expectations, many people find their motivation at different times and places, certainly not all while in high school or at age 18. Rather than going on to college following high school graduation, individuals go into the workforce, start families, join the military or travel alternative paths into adulthood and responsibility.

And of course far too many young people drop out of high school.

Meanwhile, the twin juggernauts of automation and globalization have brought unprecedented pressure to bear on wage earners, dislocating employment, disintermediating businesses, redefining what it takes to stake hold to good jobs and a comfortable place in the middle class.

Between the need for skills and the desire for upward mobility in a dramatically changed economy, millions of Americans look for a second or even third chance at post-secondary education.

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EQUAL ACCESS

to this to respond to the needs of the students education is not just a national aspira- served by the career colleges. tion but a matter of statute. Equal entry For the most intellectually and to college, however, is another matter. economically blessed Americans, a sucWhy are career colleges best able to cessful undergraduate education can provide this education? Ground truth: be a liberal arts education, conveying As a practical reality, college entry for critical thinking skills, a solid foundamany is blocked by a public university tion for graduate degree seeking, and system simply too small to handle the a network of personal connections for volume of applicants, too competitive future career success. But not for many to serve all who need education ser- Americans, who need post-secondary vices, and too focused on research and education closely tied to career prepathe advancement of knowledge to be ration and skills. diverted to support the more every day The school men of 1912 underconcerns of vocational education and stood how their commercial colleges skills. In addition, traditional institu- married a population’s need for new tion’s faculty and staff are not aligned skills with its appetite for upward with the challenges of change sufficient mobility. Countless men and women

Students from different backgrounds and with different experiences have the opportunity to pursue educational aspirations at career schools.

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traded education companies or equity investors. The schools themselves have largely moved from Main Street to suburban locations more conveniently located for adult students often juggling the frenetic schedule of work and academics. What has not changed is the ability of the private sector to expand post-secondary options in local communities, opening doors of opportunity that otherwise simply would not exist. And through accreditation

by ACICS, now standing at nearly a thousand institutions across the country in its Centennial year, the school owners of 2012 have the ability to assure that an expanding universe of An ACICS accredited institution: Minnesota School of Business was founded in 1877. Pictured is the institutions does not mean a contractcampus in Waite Park, Minnesota. ing level of academic quality. began their working lives as clerks, secretaries, and bookkeepers only to rise in the business ranks, to sustain families, to launch companies and create jobs, or even to finance still other professional education and career advancement.

One hundred years later, the specific skills needed to succeed at the entry level have changed; the desire of working Americans for a better life obtained through education, personal sacrifice, and hard work effort remains fixed.

felt a keen responsibility to safeguard educational quality, integrity and reputation. These individuals were often pillars of their respective communities, active in civic enterprise and local governance. They were as a class the merchant educators of Main Street. They banded together in a national effort to give greater voice to their allegiance to quality in career education.

One hundred years later, the ownership and business model of The school men of 1912 largely career colleges have changed. Many owned their own institutions. With family-owned schools have given their names above the entry door, they way to schools owned by publicly

FINANCING COLLEGE ATTENDANCE: INVESTMENT IN INDIVIDUAL OPPORTUNITY Education financing has also changed.

The school men of 1912 dealt with a student population largely paying for education through personal savings. Today most students in private sector colleges and universities pay their tuition through federal grants and loans. Many critics question

The school men of 1912 banded together in a national effort to give greater voice to their allegiance to quality in career education.

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Career education at the dawn of the 20th Century: Students attending Ohio Valley Business College.

While career college students do this practice. They charge that career colleges cost more than community pay more than they would at comcollege—a higher cost sorely borne by munity college, some of these students those often least able to pay. have already been to and dropped out Ground truth: Private school costs of community college. According to the student more than public school the 2012 Fact Book of the Imagine because private school tuition is not America Foundation, 40% of stusubsidized by the taxpayer. For-profit dents attending a four-year career colprivate schools pay taxes; not-for-profit lege and 22% attending a two-year public and private schools do not pay career college had previously attended taxes on surplus revenue, real property a public or private non-profit institution. Low cost appears to have little or other valuable assets.

bearing on important post-secondary outcomes such as retention, graduation and placement. While community colleges offer a lower risk tuition cost proposition, they are also best suited to dealing with traditional, college-bound students—those who represent a far lower risk of academic failure. As the price and competition for seats at more competitive admission state colleges and universities increases, community colleges have

122 SETTING STANDARDS

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Students at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Atlanta, Georgia, put their education to practice by volunteering their skills at a community service event, May 2012.

Many career colleges provide programs with hands-on instruction, specifically tailored to support student’s needs and different learning styles.

increasingly filled with otherwise academically gifted students seeking a lower cost way to fulfill their general education course requirements. The net result is that most community colleges have waiting lists for their more popular programs, such as nursing.

With their enrollments bursting at the seams, local and state governments are stymied on how to enlarge their facilities to respond to the demand without raising taxes; a particularly unpleasant choice in an election year.

Ironically, recent policies promote the availability and value of community colleges over a for-profit delivery system even though graduation statistics for these institutions nationwide trail the results of institutions like those recognized by ACICS. Critics also charge that career college education is of lessor caliber than lower cost community college education.

Ground truth: placement rates suggest that employers do not see a

difference. And much of this criticism is the product of crosstalk. Nontraditional students are higher risk students and often need a more individualized and immersive approach to post-secondary education to be successful. ACICS member institutions have pioneered pedagogical processes and methods that recognize risk factors and support learning style differences. Some students, for instance, are more attuned to hands-on instruction rather than “talk and chalk” classroom lectures and presentations. Class size makes a critical difference in learning, with students often requiring frequent and direct interaction with instructor.

Curriculum alignment is also a key difference. Many schools offer programs with single courses presented in logical sequence over a shorter, more intense period of time. One course provides the foundation for the next, and students are in less danger of failing to have a course scheduled or to be locked out because the required course is over subscribed.

Pages 124-125 are not included in this book preview

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Critics maintain that higher student loan default rates indicate that career colleges are failing in their mission and should be held accountable.

Ground truth: many career college students complete their programs, go to work in their chosen fields of endeavor, and repay their loans.

Cohort default rates on federal student loans are higher for career college students than other post-secondary students, but career college students are also more economically disadvantaged than other students. The margin of error for these individuals is thinner. They are more likely to be knocked off stride by a deep and prolonged economic recession, a job layoff, a sick relative, credit card debt or other contingency. People with fewer financial resources are more likely to default on loans wherever they attend college, whether career college, community college, or historically black or Hispanic college.

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CAROLINE NESTMANN PECK

There is no doubt that Caroline Nestmann was a smart kid. When she enrolled at the Elliott School of Business in Wheeling, West Virginia, she had already graduated class valedictorian at Wheeling High School. Who knew, however, that the young woman would leverage her talents in typing and shorthand to become an Ivy League Egyptologist and scholar of the ancient world.

Born in 1921, Caroline was one of four children. Her parents both worked: Carl as a church organist and choir director; Louise as a school teacher. Caroline knew she would need bankable skills if she were to pursue her original academic objective: astronomy. She used her business school training from the Elliott School to land a job as a secretary in the Research Division of the Standard Oil Company. Her self-improvement plan worked.

Caroline enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1942, but continued to work part-time as a secretary in the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures.

Ability clearly met opportunity.

Caroline gained a promotion to editorial assistant in the Oriental Languages Department and switched her major field of study from asteroids to ancient tombs. Along the

way, she picked up language skills in Hebrew, Akkadian and Egyptian and helped in publication of Henri Frankfort’s authoritative Kingship and the Gods. By the time she graduated from the University of Chicago in 1945, the young woman had traveled light years from her starting point in Wheeling. Yet her life’s journey was just getting started.

Again attending school part-time, Caroline earned her master’s degree at the University of Chicago in 1949, whereupon she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. That year, she accepted an offer to become a technical assistant, instructor and graduate student at Brown University. During that time, Caroline worked with leading Egyptologists and, in her doctoral dissertation, focused on an expedition to Naga ed-Der in Southern Egypt.

By then married to Russell Peck, an assistant professor of Physics at Brown, Caroline gained appointment as the Kathryn McHale Fellow of the American Association of University Women in 1956. War that year between Egypt and Israel ended what would prove to be her one and only opportunity to work in Egypt. Caroline continued on and off as a teaching associate within the Brown University Department

of Egyptology for several years, her service interrupted by her husband’s sabbaticals in Los Alamos, New Mexico and Philadelphia. Finding herself on the wrong side of office politics would end her career within the Egyptology Department in 1972, although she continued her work related to Naga ed-Der for another five years.

Clearly a woman ahead of her time, Caroline spent the last ten years of her life working as a stenographer for Rhode Island Legal Services.

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