State Will Begin Auditing For-Profit Colleges

This year the Tennessee Higher Education Commission will begin auditing all 165 career colleges in the state for the first time.

Legislation passed by the last General Assembly directs THEC to check the books at vocational schools and for-profit colleges that specialize in associates degrees. Director of school authorization Stephanie Bellard Chase says the state has set a high bar.

“Their institutional average, they have to have a 75 percent placement rate. That means 75 percent of the people that graduated got a job. And their withdrawal rate cannot exceed 33 percent.”

Until now, THEC has taken administrators at their word that they’re meeting regulations. This month, the state will send five investigators to more than 300 campuses to verify the reporting – starting in East Tennessee, then West and Middle.

Roughly 72,000 students attend Tennessee career colleges. The state also will begin collecting data on who attends these schools – including gender, age and race. THEC plans to release a first-ever report on for-profit schools sometime in ’09.