America’s PBS channel ran a documentary last week called College, Inc about the growth of for-profit higher education in the USA. The documentary is just under 1 hour and you can view it online – I did that on Friday and was amazed at the video quality and lack of lag, which was much better than watching TV clips on TV1 or TV3. You can also get audio, full interviews, background papers and all sorts of other material on the site.

Having followed this issue since 1996 or so, I was impressed at the general fairness of the programmes, especially since there had been speculation online over the last couple of weeks that it would be a hatchet job. Instead, I think it portrays fairly the pros and cons. There’s a bit of obvious distaste from the reporter about profit in education, but he still lets people make their own decisions.

It is well worth watching the documentary if you want a quick introduction to the issues around for-profit higher education in the USA. And, if you read this blog frequently, you really should think about it because these firms will operate here one day.

One of the issues in the documentary is that the University of Phoenix declined to participate on camera. I think the reporter misleads a bit in the documentary about the reasons for this, but what is amazing is that the documentary site lays out the background issues between the two parties, while the University of Phoenix does the same. It would be really good to be able to delve deeper into similar issues here – it would certainly improve the quality of journalism.

You can find some more context about the main  issues in the documentary here and here.