Assessing a Moving Target: Research on For-Profit Higher Education in the United States

Kinser, Kevin; Zipf, Sarah T.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03457-3_8

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…These varying results relate to a dramatic drop in online enrollments within the for-profit sector, which initially contained the largest providers of online education. After rapid enrollment growth during the 2000s, large for-profit institutions struggled to attract online students in the 2010s amid poor outcomes for online students at for-profits, new federal regulations, and intensive media coverage of troubling organizational behavior (Cellini & Turner, 2019 ; Fabina, 2019 ; Fountain, 2019 ; Kinser & Zipf, 2019 ). Nonresident online enrollment declined by almost 300,000 students for the for-profit sector.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concentrated or Fragmented? The U.S. Market for Online Higher Education

Cheslock

Jaquette

2021

Res High Educ

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As the financial challenges facing the U.S higher education industry mount, colleges and universities seek new activities that can improve their financial situation. Online education programs are often viewed as a promising option due to growing student interest and the substantial net revenue generated by early entrants that leveraged economies of scale and scope. The number of schools that can experience similar outcomes will depend upon whether the online market is primarily concentrated, with a small number of higher education institutions enrolling most students, rather than fragmented, with large numbers of institutions enrolling meaningful amounts of online students. We examine this topic by providing the first detailed study of market concentration in online education. We first introduce a theory from economics, Sutton’s model of endogenous fixed costs, to the higher education literature to highlight key dynamics that shape concentration levels. Using institution-level enrollment data for the population of Title IV postsecondary institutions, we then empirically examine concentration levels in online education. We find that relative to in-person education, national online enrollment patterns are heavily concentrated. The online market has a distinctive structure, consisting of a small number of large national providers and a large number of small local providers. Online enrollment patterns became less concentrated between Fall 2012 and Fall 2018 due to major enrollment declines of large for-profit providers. Concentration levels, however, plateaued by the end of the period due to rapid enrollment growth at large national nonprofit providers.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Concentrated or Fragmented? The U.S. Market for Online Higher Education

Cheslock

Jaquette

2021

Res High Educ

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“…The growth of the for-profit sector generated consequential attention from policymakers and the media. Subsequent regulations and scandal-driven legal woes drove large student enrollment declines and school closures (Kinser & Zipf, 2019). The same period also saw huge growth of online enrollments in public and nonprofit higher education.…”

Section: A Challenging Activity: Obtaining Studentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ensuring that a reasonable justification can be made to regulate one form of outsourcing and not another is important to guard against legal challenges. For example, Gainful Employment regulations-largely directed at for-profit higher education-were initially thrown out by a judge because a specific metric was not connected to the purpose of the rule (see Kinser & Zipf, 2019).…”

Section: Reasons To Regulatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For-profits had changed quickly from the proprietary campuses of previous decades and had become entrenched public corporations with expansionist tendencies. Some of the regulations put in place to address the issues of the 1980s and 1990s were inadequate to provide oversight of the new for-profit models (Kinser & Zipf, 2019). In other cases, rules didn't distinguish between the motivations for generating profit and those for institutional improvement and student success.…”

Section: Regulating With Cautionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Cellini and Turner (2019),Fabina (2019),Fountain (2019), andKinser and Zipf (2019) discuss and analyze federal regulations and student outcomes associated with for-profit institutions.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Examining the OPM: Form, Function, and Policy Implications

Cheslock¹,

Kinser²,

Zipf³

2021

Preprint

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Online program management (OPM) is the merging of online education and outsourcing practices in higher education. OPM firms facilitate the development, delivery, and management of online programs for colleges and universities. Although OPM partnerships can help institutions offer online programs they otherwise would not be able to offer, such agreements raise concerns not seen with other types of outsourcing. To help others understand the phenomenon of online program management, we pulled together fragmented information from previous studies and literature, national datasets, websites, policies and regulations, and interviews with experts. Because previous writings use a range of definitions for the term OPM, we start by providing a working definition of an OPM agreement. Each side of the agreement is then examined in turn. For colleges and universities, we consider the reasons why they choose (or do not choose) to enter into an OPM partnership. Special attention is paid to reasons pertaining to organizational finances and nonprofit conversions. For OPM firms, we provide details about the organizations that participate in this rapidly changing market. Last, we offer policy perspectives while noting possible modifications of current regulations and providing caution about unintentional consequences of over-regulation.

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The private higher education provider landscape in the UK

Hunt¹,

Boliver

2023

Studies in Higher Education

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Assessing a Moving Target: Research on For-Profit Higher Education in the United States

Cited by 4 publications

References 40 publications

Concentrated or Fragmented? The U.S. Market for Online Higher Education

Concentrated or Fragmented? The U.S. Market for Online Higher Education

Examining the OPM: Form, Function, and Policy Implications

The private higher education provider landscape in the UK

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