Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mayneack 4955 days ago
Phoenix is probably does more harm than good to the for-profit or at least disruptive private college community. Their targeting of federal subsidies that often account for ~90% of their income and the stories of them doing things that basically trick low income people into spending more money than they will get from the degree give everyone a bad impression. Even if these stories are all exaggerated (which I have no reason to believe they are), they aren't entirely false and it makes people (reasonably) dubious of other for-profit schools. Someone should have made an elite for-profit school first that then expanded to what Phoenix could be.

It's like google and other companies with driver-less cars. Sure, their cars might be safer than drivers statistically, but if you get a few high profile accidents that a driver could have stopped, they will probably get swamped in bad PR and get delayed many years. Luckily, this hasn't happened.

random example from google: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/opinion/perspectives/vet...