State oversight is a response to demandsfor accountability for student achievement andfor the use of studentfinancial aid; the overall effect may be aforced convergence.
State Oversight of the Proprietary Sector
Bruce N. Chaloux The role of the states in the oversight of postsecondary education resembles, in many instances, a patchwork quilt. It is a quilt of fifty-one pieces (fifty states and the District of Columbia), each unique in structure and scope. Despite the lack of similarity among the states, and despite claims that the autonomy of the states is the stitching for this patchwork quilt of high-quality public and private postsecondary education, many argue that there does exist a national "system" of higher education.
While community colleges have a clearly defined place and status in the family of institutions of higher education, this is not the case with the majority of proprietary schools. Nowhere are these differences among states more prominent than in the oversight of the proprietary sector. The proprietary sector remains an enigma to many state higher education agencies and poses many problems for state planners. Although the educational objectives of the community colleges and institutions in the proprietary sector seem, in many instances, to be the same, the state's treatment of these institutions is markedly different. The reasons for this are varied.
A continuing and fundamental problem is the lack of a common definition for proprietary education. Wittstrucks (1985) study, "State Oversight of Degree Granting Authority in Proprietary Institutions," reveals a variety of definitions among states, ranging from "for profit" (the most common) to no specific definition. Often, the states refer to occupational or trade and technical schools as proprietary, whether or not the institutions are for-profit operations. The more popular current title, and most descriptive-career schools-has yet to be insinuated into most state's regulatory vocabulary.