Abstracts Category : Other

Do For-Profit Colleges Have Higher Graduation Rates? Evidence from the 2014-2015 College Scorecard

by Joshua W Brownstein

The federal government is currently in the middle of a crackdown on private for-profit colleges. One reason to stop or lessen this crackdown that has been proposed is that private for-profit colleges have higher graduation rates then public colleges. Using data from the United States Department of Education College Scorecard from 2014- 2015, 2 multiple regressions were run to model college graduation rates as a function of college degree length and profit making status controlling for some confounding factors. While regression 1 is potentially biased by a very small amount of for-profit colleges and regression 2 is potentially biased due to the lack of controlling for ACT score, even ignoring these problems the regressions do not produce clear answers. 4 year private for-profit colleges in regression 1 and 2 year private for-profit colleges in regression 2 both have high graduation rates compared to other colleges. However, 4 year privatefor-profit colleges in regression 2 have fairly low graduation rates compared to other colleges. A more careful study should be conducted before claims comparing the graduation rates of public and private for-profit colleges can be confidently validated. ( en )