IHE has an article about Grand Canyon University’s effort to convert from for-profit to not-for-profit status today. Bob, who wrote a report (The Covert For-Profit) for the Century Foundation on the subject earlier, is quoted extensively.
Shireman, of the Century Foundation, doesn’t believe either accreditor has done enough, though. And he said the problem has gotten worse, not better.
“Consumers trust colleges labeled ‘public’ and ‘nonprofit’ because public and nonprofit control has been effective in preventing predatory behavior, making the schools safer places for students to enroll by separating institutional control from the financial stakes of investors,” he said.
Schools like GCU are blurring the line between non profit and for profit by trying to take the university non-profit, but then outsourcing many of their functions to a for-profit business that is effectively the old for-profit university.
A similar and equally disturbing process is at work as traditional not-for-profit universities outsource more and more functions to for-profit business partners. Most of these are things like food services, but some of them are core, academic functions of the university.