I actually have a very personal connection to this article. The older brother of one of my friends used to attend a private for profit college in Madison called ITT Tech, which was a technical college for sound production, video editing and other useful technical skills. Before my friend’s brother could finish his education, ITT Tech when bankrupt and her brother lost all of the money he had spent on tuition and all of the time/credits he acquired at the technical college.
Much like the students talked about in this article, my friend and her brother come from a lower middle class family that depended on her brother being able to receive a degree at an institution they could afford. I followed a similar route but I attended a public technical college before transferring to UW Madison. As McMillan Cottom says in her article, many students attending technical colleges rely on affordable tuition because they may not qualify to take out loans. For profit technically colleges worry more about the money than the people attending the college. The experience with my friend’s brother and the article prove that for-profit colleges “turn inequality into profit” (page 30)
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