There has been some dialogue about the benefits or disadvantages in a profit versus a non-profit college or university. I hope this article raises some points to consider.
Private for- profit schools are well established in our society, starting with preschools and progressing up the spectrum to colleges and universities. Often such schools are billed as of better quality than public schools, and placements are sought after and often hard to get.
Private for- profit schools may be more responsive to the needs of their customers, as we see in the free enterprise system. And we can also see cost cutting measure that affect the school in order to continue profits.
In a public non-profit school, cost cutting can occur to keep taxes down. And there has been criticism of the quality of some public schools, which leads many parents to place their children in private for-profit schools. Yet we see wonderful examples of exemplary teachers and schools in the public sector.
There is a common misconception that online degree programs are all for-profit. While it is true that some are, half of all private, non-profit colleges and universities provide online courses and 34% of the credits offered at traditional campus based schools are online.
It makes more sense to base the quality of the school on other measures such a accreditation, reputation, job placement rates, and testing scores. If these qualities are found in an online for-profit school and an online education system allows someone to to attend college classes, (who would not otherwise), then whether it is for-profit or not should be of small importance.