Gerard Scimeca – Co-founder, CASE
May 4, 2021
Many Americans are struggling to find well-paying jobs in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic. At a time when public universities are falling scandalously short in providing their graduates with the training and experience needed for an increasingly competitive job market, many students are discovering the benefits of private colleges that focus on training and preparing students for real work in high-paying, fulfilling careers.
This undeniable reality renders it beyond bizarre to see U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., routinely leading his Democratic congressional allies in partisan attacks against private colleges. Most recently, Scott latched upon the fact that some private for-profit universities had transitioned into not-for-profit private institutions as an opportunity to convene hearings and decry the alleged evils of private universities.
One wonders why Scott and his ideological compatriots are maniacally focused on bashing private universities while ignoring the far more pervasive problems of public universities? Perhaps Scott should concentrate on public universities with appallingly low graduation rates, as even left-of-center groups such as Third Way have criticized public colleges. These include schools such as the University of Maine at Augusta (13%) and College of Southern Nevada (12%) and Oklahoma State University at Oklahoma City (9.8%). Miami Dade College’s 32.7% graduation rate has actually been touted as a “success.”
Scott defiantly defends a system of low graduation rates and the status quo of sky-high tuition with very poor returns on investment. Forty-three percent of current graduates are unemployed or underemployed, as our education system isn’t producing graduates whose skills line-up with available jobs. These broken policies have transformed publicly supported university campuses into indoctrination outposts for socialism and hateful intolerance rather than preparing the next generations for rewarding careers.
An essential part of the private university success story that Scott might not want to hear is the opportunities they have created for disadvantaged students. Private, non-profit and for-profit colleges and universities offer career-specific degrees introducing women, veteran and minority students to jobs that greatly enhance their quality of life. Students who coupled their liberal-arts degree with technical training had twice the number of opportunities available to them upon graduation, a recent study found.
Nearly one in four bachelor’s degree students from families earning less than $50,000 attend a private college. The student bodies at private institutions are more economically diverse than is commonly understood. About 44% of students at private four-year institutions come from families with income below $50,000. At public institutions, the figure is only slightly higher at 51%, according to Department of Education data.
Private universities fare disproportionately better than their traditional, four-year counterparts when it comes to generating economic mobility and there are any many success stories. Monroe College in the Bronx placed 100% of its graduating nurses in jobs in 2017 — almost all of them minority women. In Scott’s district, ECPI University enrolls nearly 12,000 students, is ranked as a top, veteran-friendly college in America, and has the distinction of being ranked in the top 10% of schools for online programs. Sadly, Democrats such as Scott routinely ignore the positive outcomes generated by hundreds of private colleges because they don’t fit the party’s political template.
Today’s employment market is far more focused on finding potential employees with the skills and training needed to succeed in a present-day workplace and less interested in hiring employees with traditional academic degrees. Our colleges and universities should be free to offer such choice to students and operate above the nasty fray of partisan politics. But Scott seems determined to preserve a government-run education monopoly to advance a Democratic agenda. If successful in eliminating school choice, he will have placed his political future above those of students and their dreams.
