I think you're only partially correct here. What we can see through the success of for-profit schools is that people are interested for-profit education. This does not mean that they are interested in education in general--the draw may lie in the promise of higher incomes after graduation.
Now, the question is, what do for-profit institutions do better than non-profit institutions? The first is enrollment numbers. For-profit schools enroll many times the number of students that non-profit schools do. The problem with this is assuming that all students are created equal. That is, is educating 500 good students worse than educating 10,000 bad students? Even more concerning, is educating 500 students well worse than educating 10,000 students poorly? If you watch the special you will learn that it is projected that as many as 50% of for-profit students who take student loans will default on those loans. This suggests to me that, regardless of the cause, the for-profit institutions are not educating the students adequately. In this case it seems that this is not a strength of capitalism--the for-profit institutions are not making money by providing a useful service, they are essentially making money by playing snake-oil salesmen.
To my eyes, the only other thing that for-profit institutions are better at than non-profit institutions is enrolling low income students. I think this leads back to your claim that capitalism identifies vacuums in the market. I think the vacuum here is one created by marketing--free money. The for-profit institutions work by promising education, which they say lead to higher income jobs. However, we can see from the statistics that there's no direct proof of that. In fact, the crippling student loans may place students in an even worse financial situation. While educating low income students is certainly an area that we could improve upon, I don't see for-profit institutions as having any revolutionary way of solving this problem.
In essence, I think we see the situation two different ways. I understand you as seeing it as elucidating the weaknesses in traditional higher education (which I can't completely disagree with), but I also see it as direct exploitation of the undereducated due to weak governmental regulation. For-profit institutions signal a demand for what was promised but I don't see a solution anywhere in sight, including inside the for-profit universities. Right now, it's simply exploitation.
I did watch the video and a few things I noticed that the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go. The curriculum problems I also don't understand but I think it's because there are way too many bureaucratic layers to get any new kind of curriculum change approved so people don't even bother.
the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go.
I think an important issue here is that the for-profits have good numbers in these areas, but not necessarily good results. It's important to note that we can't objectively say that these things are better from an education standpoint, only from a monetary standpoint. Perhaps traditional institutions are more inflexible (don't offer online courses, etc.), but maybe that isn't an effective teaching method.
Now, the question is, what do for-profit institutions do better than non-profit institutions? The first is enrollment numbers. For-profit schools enroll many times the number of students that non-profit schools do. The problem with this is assuming that all students are created equal. That is, is educating 500 good students worse than educating 10,000 bad students? Even more concerning, is educating 500 students well worse than educating 10,000 students poorly? If you watch the special you will learn that it is projected that as many as 50% of for-profit students who take student loans will default on those loans. This suggests to me that, regardless of the cause, the for-profit institutions are not educating the students adequately. In this case it seems that this is not a strength of capitalism--the for-profit institutions are not making money by providing a useful service, they are essentially making money by playing snake-oil salesmen.
To my eyes, the only other thing that for-profit institutions are better at than non-profit institutions is enrolling low income students. I think this leads back to your claim that capitalism identifies vacuums in the market. I think the vacuum here is one created by marketing--free money. The for-profit institutions work by promising education, which they say lead to higher income jobs. However, we can see from the statistics that there's no direct proof of that. In fact, the crippling student loans may place students in an even worse financial situation. While educating low income students is certainly an area that we could improve upon, I don't see for-profit institutions as having any revolutionary way of solving this problem.
In essence, I think we see the situation two different ways. I understand you as seeing it as elucidating the weaknesses in traditional higher education (which I can't completely disagree with), but I also see it as direct exploitation of the undereducated due to weak governmental regulation. For-profit institutions signal a demand for what was promised but I don't see a solution anywhere in sight, including inside the for-profit universities. Right now, it's simply exploitation.