Searching for a colleges and proprietary schools over
internet is the primary reason for misleading prospective students to dubious
schools and wrong career programs. This
blog will tell you why you should not bank on internet search to find the right
college for you. Enrolling into wrong school or program that is not ideal for
you can end up unnecessary student loan debt, graduating from program which is not accredited and no desired employment aligned to your career goal. You will be in worse situation than your
current one if you enroll into a wrong college. Following reasons explain you why you should not be searching for
colleges in the internet. I will also explain you how you should do you
research for colleges and programs that you intent to enroll to verify
accreditation, affordability and effectiveness of the program.
1.Search
engines marketing (SEM)
When you are looking for colleges in Google or any other popular search boxes, your search results will be based on SEM, in other words schools and
colleges who pay the most dollar amount for SEM, will be on the top of the page accordingly in order for you to find them easily. So
you are not seeing the colleges who spend more on quality of education,
teaching staff and student experiences. You are not finding colleges which are excellent in graduating students and helping them to find a job in their related field of study. Rather you will be finding colleges who
spend most of their money in marketing and advertising. Make sense? It will be
evident and clear to you if you run a search now in your computer. Write down the top five schools from your search result. Now you click on the website below which is administered
by US Department of Education.
You will see a page similar to this:
Now search for the schools you have found in the above website. You will find the necessary information like net tuition,
graduation rate, cohort default rate etc. to help you understand why these colleges
are spending so much money in advertising and marketing. You will be horrified to see their graduation rate and net tuition.
Schools with high default
rates may lose their eligibility to participate in or expand their federal
student aid programs. You should be always looking for schools with sanctions. US Department of Education website is a good way
to find out the list schools who lost their federal funding.
There is a trend for colleges, who offer specialty programs like nursing and other healthcare programs
which require programmatic accreditation, market heavily in the internet to increase enrollments. They do not care about student graduation, but more focused into making enough revenue from new enrollments, their drop out rates are usually horrifically high. Typically these colleges come on the first page of the search result.
Most of the time either these schools are lacking right accreditation, may be
on probation for low passing rate or existing just to make money
from your financial aid. Be extra careful not to select these schools. I have
written two posts on institutional accreditation and programmatic accreditation
with more insight and website links for your benefit. Please refer to these
posts when you are researching school’s accreditation. Or you post a comment if you are unable to find.
2. Lead
generators / 3rd party marketing websites:
There are hundreds of lead generators for colleges and
universities who are actively conducting aggressive marketing thru search
engines. These websites are offering free laptop, scholarships, accelerated programs and all different kinds of baits you can think of to steal your
information. Make sure you read the fine print before you give out your name,
phone number and emails. Fine print will always say that colleges and
universities will call you regarding your inquiries. Be very careful filling
out these forms. You will be getting many calls from the low quality colleges who buy
your inquiries from these third party lead generators.
Lead generators sell your information at the rate of $50 to $75 to colleges who will employ aggressive and skilled sales people to recruit you.
3. Aggressive
and misleading recruiting tactics:
In order to achieve enrollment goals, recruiting and
admissions managers create boiler-room atmosphere in for money hungry colleges, in which hitting an
enrollment quota was the admissions representatives’ highest priority. In most
cases, admissions representatives lose their jobs if they miss their enrollment
budget or quota. In many cases they make boatload of money by reaching goals.
As a result, when you get a call from an admissions rep or a college recruiter from revenue focused colleges, you will most likely mislead to a program with high tuition and high drop out rate by their smooth talking, salesmanship
and lies. Recruiters are trained to communicate with high energy, motivating
voice, pseudo empathy to catch your attention. You will start trusting whatever
they say and at one point find yourself enrolling into a school which is
exploiting your hardship and need for desire to launch a career.
While substantial growth in distance education (Online) may
support post-secondary access, it also presents oversight challenges for the
federal government. For example, concerns have been raised about the ability of
schools to verify the identity and attendance of students enrolled in distance
education programs.
Source:
US Department of Education
Government Accountability Office
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