Literature Review # 5

(1)    

(2)    U.S. Senate. HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR AND PENSIONS COMMITTEE.  For Profit Higher Education: The Failure to Safeguard the Federal Investment and Ensure Student Success (1-181). Washington: Government Printing Office, July. 2012

(3)     The US Senate's HELP committee researched the deceptive tactics that for-profits used during their enrollment process. Their results show that for-profits will go to extreme lengths to recruit students, including targeting the most vulnerable parts of the population.

(4)    The US HELP committee is a portion of the Senate. It handles manners concerning the health, education, and work force of the nation.

(5)   Pain Funnel - sales tactic used by for-profit recruiters that elicits pain in students, causing them to make decisions without much thought

      Objections - doubts or concerns students may have about enrollment. Recruiters used scripts or aggressive language to overcome student objections.

(6)    "After a recruiter located a prospective student’s pain point, the “pain funnel” presented a number

of questions that the recruiter can ask that are progressively more hurtful" (HELP 62).

Students are mentally backed into a corner with the pain funnel method. Then, recruiters would offer the solutions to all of the students' problems in the form of a for-profit degree.

"For instance, Vatterott’s internal “Student Profiles,” part of a manual to train recruiters, detailed the demographic subgroups that the company targets for enrollment: 'Welfare Mom w/Kids. Pregnant Ladies. Recent Divorce. Low Self-Esteem. Low Income Jobs. Experienced a Recent Death. Physically/Mentally Abused. Recent Incarceration. Drug Rehabilitation. Dead-End Jobs-No Future'"(HELP 58).

Low-income and minority populations are targeted by these companies, and recruiters are trained to find and take advantage of students who fit the description.

"An internal Concorde email indicates that company employees had visited 'welfare offices' and 'unemployment offices,' although recruiters were later told to stop visiting these offices because it may be a violation of accreditation standards" (HELP 58).

In their attempt to exploit low-income neighborhoods and find prospective students, some recruiters have been known to show up at social service organization offering for-profit education as solutions to vulnerable people.

(7)     This study explicitly shows the methods used by for-profit college in their efforts to take advantage of the low-income communities. Students are pushed to the edge, emotionally, and then offered a solution in for-profit education. If students do not comply, they are met with more aggressive methods of recruitment.