Employers are more likely to hire non-profit college alumni than a person with a for-profit college degree. What exactly is the difference between the two? What is the stigma that comes along with for-profit college degrees?
Most colleges are non-profit. State and many private colleges are nonprofit which charges their students tuition but they spend that money on educating the students. The money is used to pay the salaries of professors and instructors. Brooklyn College would be an example of non-profit institution. On the other hand, a for-profit college charges on tuition but doesn’t always use all that money on the student’s education, but rather marketing and recruiting. This would lead to lower salaries of the professors and less quality of education for the students.
It is inevitable, therefore, that non-profit schools have better accreditation by the employers in the real world. For-profit schools are usually easier to get accepted to especially if one has the money. This is where the stigma play its role. Does their degree have a significant value? Is it worth it to go to a for-profit college? It isn’t uncommon that some of them can run out of business at anytime.
I have a very optimistic vision for the future of for-profit college alumni as well as other students who have attended institutions of higher education that are not generally recognized. The job market is in the United States is experiencing dynamic changes. When the job market experiences fluctuations, employers feel the impact of this particular externality. As a result, employers would have no choice but to step outside of their ‘traditional’ hiring criteria in an effort to stay ahead of the market and be able to compete in the global economy by hiring employees from for-profit schools.
I was surprised to see that there is a stigma attached to for-profit schools, however thinking it over now it might make sense. Whenever I think back to different organizations, it would seem that most of the ones that seem to leave a mark on me would be the “non-profit” organizations. When it comes to the idea of the organization, it would make sense for those to be “non-profit” since you would hope that the money you put into the institution were to not spend it on themselves (in a greedy way) but to put it to good use. However in the sense of a college, it does not make sense to stigmatize the for-profit schools since, as we learned, college has basically become a business for the country.