Campus Conservatives and Progressives Unite to Raise Awareness About Student Debt Crisis

In conjunction with the College of Wooster Student Government, campus Libertarians and Socialists have united to raise awareness about the student debt crisis. This Tuesday, March 5th, Aaron Calafato will perform his one-man play, “For Profit” at the College of Wooster. This will be immediately followed by a panel discussion regarding the for-profit college industry and the student debt crisis. This event is FREE for all to attend and will be live-streamed at StudentDebtCrisis.org/ForProfit, giving the rest of the world a glimpse of the exploitation of the American college student.

For more than a year, Aaron Calafato has been performing his solo play, “For Profit” at colleges across the country. His play chronicles his experiences from when he worked as an admissions counselor at a for-profit college and details the predatory nature of this industry. Calafato originally took the position because he viewed it as a means to pay off his own student debt, while simultaneously helping others achieve their dream of attending college. However, it didn’t take long for him to realize that the school valued profit over the wellbeing of the students and he was expected to do whatever it took to enroll students. According to Calafato, “We were  pushed to treat people like numbers, if you didn’t, your job was in jeopardy. I noticed when I started performing my job duties ethically, my enrollment numbers went down.”

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The for-profit college industry has experienced increased scrutiny for valuing profits over the wellbeing of students. According to Calafato, at for-profit colleges, intense pressure is placed on admissions counselors to do just about whatever it takes to get students to enroll and apply for student loans. The more students that enroll, the more taxpayer money in the form of student aid is allocated to the school. Currently, only 10% of U.S. students attend for-profit colleges, yet these schools receive nearly 25% of all student aid and are responsible for nearly half of all student loan defaults.

Proponents of for-profit colleges often argue that these schools are able to minimize the cost for students by offering mostly online courses. In reality, according to a government investigation, full-time students attending for-profit colleges and universities pay nearly twice the amount of those attending traditional public colleges. Additionally, for-profit colleges invest more money in advertising the school than actually teaching the students. One glaring example of this includes Ashford University, a for-profit college in Iowa. According to a Senate investigation, the school invested a mere  $700 per student on instruction, compared to $2,714 on marketing per student. Additionally, Ashford charges higher tuition than the local public university, yet spends 17 times less on instructing students.

For these reasons and more, this Tuesday, March 5th, Aaron Calafato will perform his one-man play, “For Profit” at the College of Wooster which will be live-streamed at StudentDebtCrisis.org/forprofit. This creative form of expression serves as an important creative tool in educating, informing, and creating social dialogue about the growing for-profit college industry and the student debt crisis. For more information on this issue and to bring the play, For Profit to your campus, please visit StudentDebtCrisis.org or www.aaroncalafato.com.