The conclusions about racism and sexism are more speculative (but likely true). This study came out of her dissertation work. Cottom explains credit transfers and the unfortunate firewall between for profit and non profit works, she shares her experiences applying to for profit colleges, interviews students and FPC employees, and she even worked at two before getting her PhD at Emory University. With solid socio methods (explained throughout and in the final chapters) she shows how, to some extent, the rise of for profit institutions resulted from income inequalities and systemic policies which (while they provide opportunities for disenfranchised groups) are also predatory and socioeconomically regressive.

The author/researcher makes this expose and analysis accessible to lay readers, it's valuable to higher ed faculty/administrators like me who have more knowledge of all the word of traditional institutions. McMillan Cottom discloses the shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies that these schools deploy and explains how, despite the well-documented predatory practices of some and the campus closings of others, ending for-profit colleges won't end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education at the turn of the 21st century. In Lower Ed, Tressie McMillan Cottom - a bold and rising public scholar, herself once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges - expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry to show precisely how it is part and parcel of the growing inequality plaguing the country today. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years - during the so-called Wall Street era of for - profit colleges. More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials.

Tressie cottom lower ed