Texas Health-Care College Gains Attention

For-profit colleges have seen plenty of controversy, as reported here often. Some proprietary schools have gone out of business, in the wake of charges that the institutions preyed upon students, training individuals for jobs that don’t pay very well, and costing taxpayers millions of dollars in financial aid.

The leader of a growing Texas for-profit college thinks his institution may have “cracked the code” for lifting students out of poverty and into careers in high-demand health-care fields. And he’s got student outcomes data to back that assertion, as reported by Paul Fain, in Inside Higher Ed.

Students who enroll at the College of Health Care Professions tend to arrive in “significantly distressed situations,” said Eric Bing, the college’s CEO. “Our goal is to stabilize,” the article reports.

The reported statistics are impressive and the tuition is cheaper than what for-profit schools tend to charge for enrollment, but still more expensive than many such programs at community colleges. Please read the article for details, especially if you are in the health care field. CHCP offers a nine-month associates degree at several campuses in Texas.

From the piece:

• Associate degree programs at CHCP can lead to higher wages, like the median pay of $34,000 for graduates of the allied health diagnostic, intervention and treatment professions degree program at the college’s northwest Houston campus, according to federal data.
• CHCP’s students are diverse, as is Texas. More than half (56 percent) are Latino, 22 percent are black and 88 percent are women.
• More than a third (36 percent) of students previously attended college — typically a community college for two to three years — but failed to graduate.
• Many health-care companies are desperate to hire medical assistants, with federal data projecting a 23 percent expansion of the occupation over the next decade. Yet medical assistant training programs often are plagued by low graduation rates.
• The College of Health Care Professions’ overall retention rate in the first year is 82 percent. Campus graduation rates hover around 75 percent or higher — the Austin campus has an 81 percent graduation rate.