Buying Low: Are the Proprietary Colleges Swooping' In?

Some of the best stuff being written in the higher ed world right is coming from bloggers. Here's a recent installment from the "Confessions of a Community College Dean" blog in Inside Higher Ed:

Apparently, the proprietary colleges are in the midst of another of their periodic booms, swooping in and grabbing students just when the public sector is reeling from yet another round of budget cuts.

I’ve seen this movie.

As regular readers know, I used to work for a proprietary. You’ve heard of it.

I’d be both more and less worried than the IHE story suggests.

The worrisome part of the return of the proprietaries is that, unlike the public sector, their income rises and falls with enrollments. This means they’re immune to the double-bind the public colleges routinely experience during recessions, when enrollments go up but funding goes down. This Fall my cc is experiencing the highest enrollments in its history, and applications for the Spring are even higher than that; at the exact same time, our operating funding is crashing. Say what you want about ‘administrators’ – I defy anybody to make that math work without pain. It’s one thing to do more with less, and another to perform alchemy.

For the DeVry’s and Phoenixes of the world, though, higher enrollments automatically equate to higher revenues. This means they can add capacity when it makes sense. In times like these, I envy them that.