While the health care industry experiences a workforce shortage, concern is growing over the country's capacity to produce enough new entrants. A recent report by The Center for American Progress (CAP) addresses this issue, looking at the role of for-profit colleges in training the health care workforce -- an area of particular interest to the black community, since African Americans account for a large percentage of most for-profit colleges' student populations. With their pattern of recruiting under-served demographics of students, for-profit colleges are a significant point of access into the health care field for students of color. At the same time, there are issues:
For-profit colleges concentrate on educating students primarily in lower-paying, lower-skilled health support fields. With so many students of color in their student bodies, that means many minority students will end up in support positions such as medical assistants rather than as registered nurses.
Still, for-profit institutions are training a large percentage of students of color for health care jobs. About 25 percent of the health care degrees and certificates awarded at for-profit colleges in 2009 went to African Americans, compared to only 11 percent at not-for-profit institutions. And 24 percent of for-profit health care credentials went to Latino students compared to only 8 percent at not-for-profits. The upshot: For-profit institutions play a substantial role in training students of color for a career in health care...
Even so, for-profit colleges are educating more students of color relative to their size, and not-for-profits are educating more white students.
Many have noticed this discrepancy, and what it leads to: Minorities losing out on better paying health care jobs, even though the for-profit schools they are attending are being funded with loans and government monies that could be parlayed into better careers. In a separate article, The Center for American Progress explains the result of this phenomenon:
For-profit colleges came under scrutiny from the press, student advocacy groups,
and the federal government in the past year for their steep enrollment growth,
high profit margins, and dependence on federal dollars. Reports reveal extraordinary
enrollment rates contrasted with low graduation rates and high student loan
defaults. This is a significant issue for the individual students who carry high debt
burdens without the benefit of a college degree as well as for the federal government, who provides the grants and loans that make up 90 percent of these companies' revenues in some cases.
Read more about the lack of minority non-profit college enrollment and the subsequent lack of high-paid black health care professionals on The Center for American Progress web site. This study is enlightening, but personal experience is enough to see why this trend is occurring.
You've seen their commercials, and heard their testimonials: "Now my mommy works with doctors!" says one of the cutest little brown girls you've ever seen in one ad, just before a voice-over urges you to pick up the phone right now and make the call for a better life. Another ad shows a woman of color in scrubs talking about liking her paycheck so much better, now that she has this degree that she earned in almost no time. The thing to remember is that, unlike their not-for-profit counterparts (e.g. community colleges), which offer a wider variety of health care education programs (as in, often way more profitable options like nursing degrees), for-profit colleges focus on educating students mostly in lower-paying, less-skilled health support fields. Those same government grants could be supporting more women of color becoming nurses rather than medical office assistants -- but these women are not being funneled into the non-for-profit health care education system, which is not prone towards heavy advertising.
Without discounting the opportunities available at for-profit colleges, I would urge anyone interested in entering the health care workforce who is tempted by a for-profit institution's commercial to seek all the information possible about their desired field before making a decision about where to study. Look beyond commercials, which are not engineered with your best interest in mind. Ads seldom are.
This diligent research could mean the difference between starting your new health care career earning a salary of approximately $60,000 a year as a nurse, or earning half as much as a medical assistant -- for a similar cost of education.