2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageI am Not a Phoenix: What Traditional Photography Departments Can Learn from the Successes and Failures of For-Profit Colleges
Colleen Mullins
Saturday, November 09 - 1:50PM to 2:35PM
In 2006, I embarked on a six-year adventure leading a photography program in the for-profit college "industry." For-profit colleges think of themselves through-and-through as businesses, and thus, a sector of an industry: The industry of higher education. But what I observed during my tenure there were sound educational operational practices that led to better retention, remarkable student achievement, dogged pursuit of photography expertise, and a caring about students the likes of which I'd seen nowhere in my career.
According to a U.S. Senate report released July 30, 2012, from 1998-2008, for-profit college enrollment grew by 225%, while traditional colleges grew by only 31%. What accounts for this? Many would argue predatory admissions practices. But the thing people seldom discuss is the graduates from programs like mine, who in addition to that well-publicized debt, achieved a 79% employment rate in Minnesota in 2009-10 (The highest of all Bachelors earners in Minnesota that year). Can we in traditional education outlets pretend that employment isn't important in these times of declining enrollments and budgets to match? This talk focuses on the educator's point of view on the practices that led to strong student outcomes at one college, in one program.
I was lavished with the best facilities, very new equipment with incredible cage depth for student check-out, and budgets that would have made any of my colleagues at other colleges cry. How is it possible that our public universities function on a non-profit basis and lack the budgetary support to do the same things? What can we do in traditional higher-ed photography programs to embrace the things that make all of this possible?
For-profit moves such as the early adoption of on online education, the almost obsessive interest in quality in the classroom as a reaction to outside perceptions of for-profits as puppy mills, exceptional use of that data to drive quality forward, outside-the-box thinking on the academic calendar, and how the center simply cannot hold, will all be discussed.
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