Scam Colleges (I promise this is interesting)
The nursing shortage in Wisconsin presents a genuine crisis. There are far too few nurses for the increasingly long-living elderly population, and beyond. Healthcare is fundamental, and our system is broken. Its flaws are many and indicative of broad societal problems like class inequality, structural racism, and dehumanizing bureaucracy. In the middle of this are sick people, and their nurses, who exist to retain the humanity of medical care to patients. If you are anywhere near healthcare you have heard of this shortage. To become a nurse one must attend a licensed nursing education program, and not all schools are created equally.
Milwaukee is a city that bears scars from several for-profit institutions, whether it is Sanford Brown, ITT Tech or the Art Institute. With the lowered job placement rates from these for-profit schools, and the credits unable to transfer to other more reputable schools, it seems the only lasting impact of these schools is the debt one accrues upon attending. Yet unlike the pile of debt from whatever college you statistically went to, the degree from one of these institutions is worthless. These “diploma mills,” as they are often called, have a human cost and are an area where we are once again let down by a feckless local and state government.
Regulating Body
Wisconsin Educational Approval Program is the state program that aims to protect consumers who may be tricked into attending one of these organizations. The only 4 criteria a school must meet in this “rigorous process” are based on financial solvency, and a school saying that it will “totally follow the rules and do the right thing, just trust us.” In order to show that a school has made the effort to meet these low barriers, a school needs to build out a constitution that details its stated intent.
A school can have a history of low completion rates, high rates of federal loan default, or be currently entangled in a lawsuit in a different state. WEAP will still approve these schools. For this particular body to move and regulate a school in Wisconsin the school must have already operated in the state and harmed its student body. This is leniency on predatory businesses that borders on negligence. The application process as it currently stands is a rubber stamp to allow businesses to run wild, and we need a regulatory body that can recognize obvious harm before it occurs!
Who gives a shit?
These institutions target vulnerable populations, swindle them out of financial aid assistance, and rob them of future opportunities. We don’t need more for profit, incompetent nursing schools, we need to strengthen the nursing schools we already have. And while the UW system repeatedly comes under attack at the legislature, we need the Education Governor to defend those institutions and specifically to fund them in the state budget. Naturally the Speaker Robin Vos-dominated legislature will not voluntarily include this in their budget, but the opportunity for Evers is to then reject their budget, and do more than showboat progressive governance with a proposed budget – one that’s already been thrown out by Vos and his caucus. For the governor to actually protect state schools we need him to show some backbone in the budget process.
We need legislation that closes the 90/10 loophole - which causes these predatory institutions to actively recruit veterans for their GI bill in order to avoid financial penalties - and we need legislation that forces for profit colleges to spend their money on the education they are providing, not on things like advertising and the lawyers they need to sway their many, well-deserved legal battles.
On a more local level the Common Council and the Mayor could deny these schools’ permission to operate at several points. The problem then is that schools like Arizona College of Nursing threaten to sue, something our spineless local leaders have no taste for. The government, if we are going to have one, needs to operate as a body that stands between people and capitalist predators.
It is not lost on me that there are dozens of issues that take a higher priority to the activist minded. ICE is disappearing students, there is lead in our drinking water and practically everywhere it shouldn’t be, and we are increasingly being priced out of our homes. It isn’t a coincidence that our wannabe dictator president once operated a for-profit scam college! This is a stay richer quick scheme by the monied fucks who run our country.
This issue is smaller, maybe, but when centrist and business minded collaborationists of the Democratic Party cannot get it together to provide protection on even small issues that directly protect regular people, they contribute to the popularly-lamented lack of faith in democratic institutions, and that clears the path for right wing populism and fascist ascendancy
