For-Profit Universities

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Tressie McMillan Cottom

   Pages 1-8

3. What Is the Difference? Public Funding of For-Profit, Not-For-Profit, and Public Institutions

   • Bonnie K. Fox Garrity

   Pages 9-25

4. For-Profit Higher Education in the UK: The Politics of Market Creation

   • Jonathan White

   Pages 27-52

5. For Profit U Through the Eyes of IPEDS: Warts and All

   • Victor M. H. Borden

   Pages 53-71

6. Social Capital Development and For-Profit Post-secondary Education: A Planned Study

   • Thomas A. Mays

   Pages 73-97

7. Stratification and the Public Good: The Changing Ideology of Higher Education

   • Gaye Tuchman

   Pages 99-118

8. Who Attends For-Profit Institutions?: The Enrollment Landscape

   • Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, Steve Stokes, William A. Darity Jr.

   Pages 119-157

9. Enrollment and Degree Completion at For-Profit Colleges versus Traditional Institutions

   • D. Diego Torres, Jane Rochmes, David J. Harding

   Pages 159-221

10. Back Matter

    Pages 223-224

    PDF

This edited volume proposes that the phenomenon of private sector, financialized higher education expansion in the United States benefits from a range of theoretical and methodological treatments. Social scientists, policy analysts, researchers, and for-profit sector leaders discuss how and to what ends for-profit colleges are a functional social good. The chapters include discussions of inequality, stratification, and legitimacy, differing greatly from other work on for-profit colleges in three ways: First, this volume moves beyond rational choice explanations of for-profit expansion to include critical theoretical work. Second, it deals with the nuances of race, class, and gender in ways absent from other research. Finally, the book's interdisciplinary focus is uniquely equipped to deal with the complexity of high-cost, low-status, for-profit credentialism at a scale never before seen.

• students
• private sector college
• shareholder organization
• institutional sector
• social stratification

• Virginia Commonwealth University Department of Sociology, Richmond, USA

  Tressie McMillan Cottom

• Duke University, Durham, USA

  William A. Darity, Jr.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA. She is a former Fellow at the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, USA, and at the Microsoft Social Media Collective.



William A. ("Sandy") Darity, Jr., is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, USA. He has served as Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding Director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. 




Contributors
Victor H.M. Borden, Indiana University, USA
Bonnie K. Fox Garrity, Accord Integrated Academic and Financial Integration, USA
David J. Harding, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Thomas A. Mays, Miami University, USA
Jane Rochmes, Stanford University, USA
Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe, Bucknell University, USADavid Diego Torres, Rice University, USA
Gaye Tuchman, University of Connecticut, USA
Jonathan White, University and College Union, UK

Policies and ethics