Cost Comparison – Community vs. For-Profit Colleges
On November 20, 2012, Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield, Missouri released a video on Vimeo that compared its annual cost to attend its school to the cost of attending for-profit colleges.
Ozarks Technical Community College compared the cost of attending its school compared to Bryan, ITT Tech, Vatterott, and Everest Colleges and found that the for-profit schools’ annual costs are four to nearly ten times the cost of attending its school. Ozarks Technical Community College used information from the U.S. Department of Education to compare the annual total costs of tuition, fees, books and supplies at each college and found the costs to attend these schools: Bryan $31,845, ITT Tech $18,048,
Everest $13,998, Vatterott $13,678, and Ozarks Technical Community College $3,272. Ozarks Technical Community College’s results demonstrate that community colleges are often an over-looked bargain compared to for-profit colleges.
Also, a Senate investigation into for-profit colleges conducted over a two year period was released in July. It was a voluminous, hard-hitting indictment of almost every aspect of the for-profit higher education industry, filled with troubling statistics and anecdotes drawn from internal documents of the 30 companies investigated.
According to the report, taxpayers spent $32 billion in the most recent year on companies that operate for-profit colleges, but the majority of students they enroll leave without a degree, half of those within four months.