Fully online programs widen achievement gaps and often are unaffordable, says report seeking to discourage politicians from pulling back on federal policy protections.
For-Profits and a Shifting Market
In making their case, the report’s authors point to the 2006 move by Congress to drop federal aid restrictions for online program offerings from colleges. The greatest beneficiaries of this “opening the floodgates of federal student aid to fully online schools” were for-profits, the report said, adding that the sector has a “well-established and long record of predatory behavior and compliance troubles.”
For-profit colleges in 2016 enrolled just 6 percent of all students but 24 percent of those enrolled in fully online programs, the report said, citing federal data. And that high concentration should raise oversight concerns for policy makers and the department.
Yet for-profits’ share of online students is shrinking amid the sector’s deep, multiyear collapse.
More than half of students who were enrolled in fully online programs in 2004 attended for-profits, said Sean R. Gallagher, executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy. And he estimates that less than 20 percent of students in fully online programs currently are enrolled at for-profits.