[CS-FSLUG] [OT] Re: Seeking opinions

[David Aikema]

On 5/16/06, doc <edoc7 at verizon.net> wrote:
> > Well, a for-profit company has investors which expect to receive money
> > back from this - which may lead to compromising academic integrity for
> > the sake of profit.
>
> Or may lead to exceptional excellence in order to
> enhance long term prestige and profits.

Do you see that happening in practice?  (considering the lawsuits
against both Devry and University of Phoenix?)

> > The non-for-profits instead of money to shareholders, have as their
> > goal producing mature graduates (eg. Christian colleges), who will
> > uphold the reputation of the school (eg. MIT, Harvard, Stanford,
> > etc.), and are capable of fulfilling a role within society
> > (government-funded institutions).  Perhaps this is a somewhat utopian
> > vision of the not-for-profits, but I'm wary of for-profit companies in
> > this area.
>
> Given the recent conduct of Harvard, not to mention
> their historic abandonment of anything but a false
> pretext of Christianity, I'd hardly accept the postulate
> that their non-profit status contributed to "producing
> mature graduates".

I was trying to illustrate a number of different categories of
non-profit institutions.  My intention was that the particular goal be
associated with the immediately following examples - ie. pairing
mature grads with Christian colleges, reputation with schools like
MIT, etc.

A non-profit school may choose a policy of grade inflation, but then
its prestige will begin to decrease.  However, in the case of a
non-profit school there's not the same financial motivation for doing
so.

Wow... we're way off-topic here.

Dave