Higher Ed | Daily Report

Besieged with negative press about the for-profit college sector, a lobbying group for the industry has been waging something of a Web 2.0 attack against the media.

A number of outlets have published hard-hitting stories about for-profit colleges in recent months. In November, ProPublica and NPR’s Marketplace published a joint investigation that showed some University of Phoenix recruiters have continued to use high-pressure, deceptive tactics to enroll students. This after the parent company paid $10 million to settle allegations it had broken the law by tying recruiters’ pay to enrollment numbers.

Daniel Golden of Bloomberg reported in December that for-profit schools now account for 29 percent of active-duty military enrollments. Critics said the shift leads to education shortcuts and hyped marketing. Meanwhile, New America Foundation’s Stephen Burd has scrutinized for-profits on his blog, and in a November Washington Monthly piece he reported that while for-profit colleges have a much lower graduation rate than other institutions, their degree-earners graduate with much higher student debt.

All this hasn’t sat well with Washington, D.C.-based Career College Association, which represents 1,400 colleges and lobbies Congress and the U.S Department of Education on federal financial aid legislation. While it’s no surprise that an organization would push out its own stream of information to try to counteract bad press, CCA seems to take this to a new level. To be sure, CCA tweets and blogs about more than just self-defense. But a look at recent posts shows a definite theme:

@ccanow: Here's a thought: if a news source is going to run a negative article about an entire sector, shouldn't they allow comments on the piece? (9:28 AM Dec 15th, 2009) (Tweeted the day Golden’s Dec. 15 story was posted on Bloomberg.)

@ccanow: CCA's Harris Miller Comments on Bias of New America Foundation's Stephen Burd: http://is.gd/5PsME (3:13 PM Jan 6th)

@ccanow: Career College Association Responds to Daniel Golden's BusinessWeek Attack on Online For-Profit Colleges: http://is.gd/5S3Uj (11:41 AM Jan 7th)

@ccanow: CCA Highlights Unfair Criticism of Pell Grant Revenue by Chronicle of Higher Education: http://is.gd/5VLNI (2:51 PM Jan 8th)

@ccanow: Dispelling the Myths of Charlotte Allen's Attack of For-Profit Colleges: http://ow.ly/1n5lVf (Jan. 15)

When ProPublica tweeted it was looking for for-profit recruiters to tell their stories, CCA tweeted, too.

@ccanow: @propublica Is there any particular reason you're only asking about for-profit recruiters as opposed to all of them in higher ed? Strange... (2:00 PM Jan 7th)

Later, CCA tweeted a request for people to share positive stories with ProPublica:

@ccanow: We don't expect even a shred of fairness, but if you have a positive story please share it: http://bit.ly/4wOAUG (Jan. 15)

And CCA's tweets lead to its blog, which says, for example, Golden's article "reveals how little he thinks of military service members" and describes a Chronicle of Higher Education chart as "out of context and apropos of essentially nothing."