Study: For-Profit College Degree Has Little to No Value in Job Market

A recent study conducted by the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research found that students who graduated from a for-profit college have the same chances of getting called back for an interview as a peer who has no college experience at all.

Researchers of the study sent nearly 9,000 fake résumés to job openings in six different career categories and compared those responses to the responses of applicants that had community college experience or no college experience at all.

The results of the study showed that applicants with community college experience have a slightly higher chance of getting called back for an interview than applicants who attended a for-profit college. For instance, for-profit college graduates got a response 11.3% of time and an interview request 4.7% of the time, compared to those with community college experience who got a response 11.6% of the time and an interview request 5.3% of the time.

Aside from these results, the study also finds that graduates of a for-profit college have little advantage over peers without any college experience at all, meaning that students with thousand-dollar investments in for-profit college education have the same chances of getting a job as someone who has zero student loan debt. According to a report released in 2012, the average cost for a two-year associate’s degree at a for-profit college is $35,000 compared to $8,300 for a similar degree at a community college. The same study also shows that roughly 60% of for-profit college students take out a student loan versus just 13% of community college students.

Hopefully, studies like these will have scholars thinking twice before they fall for the next for-profit college commercial seen on television.

SOURCE: Think Progress