In mythology, the phoenix is a fabulous bird with purple and gold feathers that lives for 500 years.
When it feels itself dying of old age, it makes a nest of incense and spices and climbs atop it.
The bird dies and bursts into flame. Its body and nest burn away completely, until all that remains is a sort of worm crawling in the ashes.
Soon the worm puts forth feathers and grows into a new phoenix, which will live for 500 years — and that’s where we came in.
In American education, however, “Phoenix” means “national disgrace.” It’s the name of a pioneering for-profit university, infamous for its fraudulent recruiting practices, high rate of debt per student and low graduation rate.
If a student is hardy enough to undertake the burden of debt and manages to earn at last their University of Phoenix diploma, they may find it isn’t worth much.
A year-long study of corporate preferences, conducted by the Online University Consortium, showed that the vast majority of corporate decision — makers would prefer to promote or hire someone from a traditional university, even if they had an online degree, over a graduate of Phoenix.
So: go Falcons. Our University is the better university for the same reason our bird is the better bird: they’re both real.
But the “University” of Phoenix, with its part-time completely-demoralized faculty, its baskets of worthless diplomas and its cart loads of student debt, does have one thing going for it. It’s a highly profitable scam for the businessmen that run it.
Phoenix has paid out millions in fines and legal penalties for its illicit practices, but so what?
It takes in billions of student loan money in a single year. Your tax dollars at work.
Meanwhile, our University, like every other public university, could use more money.
The temptation to “Phoenicize,” to follow the slash-and-burn Phoenix model of a profiteering university, must be strong. I think there are some disturbing signs that the University is poised to take this wrong turn.
President Mazey announced a goal, in her “State of the University” address on Wednesday, to raise enrollment to 25,000 — up by 7,000 students in seven years.
Retention is a part of the plan, but also intensive recruitment of nontraditional and online students — not in itself a bad idea, but a distressing echo of that vile bird, the Phoenix.
Is there any real reason to think that President Mazey is looking to Phoenix as a model for the University?
Unfortunately, yes.
This past year at one of her “President’s Panels,” Dr. Mazey spoke approvingly of a colleague at another university who had set up an online program on the “University of Phoenix model.”
She said “they generated over a million dollars worth of revenues. If we want to be competitive we have to do it. If we want to get to 25,000 students, that’s how we get there.” (http://www.bgsu.edu/downloads/bgsu/file106189.pdf)
Competitive at what, though? The University of Phoenix and other for-profit institutions excel at draining students of their financial aid and throwing them away.
That’s not the business we’re in, and that’s not a business we should be in.
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