{"id":10622,"date":"2019-07-23T11:53:39","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T15:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10622"},"modified":"2019-07-23T11:53:39","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T15:53:39","slug":"church-and-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=10622","title":{"rendered":"Church and education"},"content":{"rendered":"

A story in today’s New York Times<\/i><\/a> exemplifies the reasons that (1) churches should not be publicly subsidized via a privileged tax status, and (2) the country ought to be run by bona fide<\/i> professionals rather than big donors.<\/p>\n

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Dream Center Education Holdings, a subsidiary of a Los Angeles-based megachurch<\/span>, had no experience in higher education when it petitioned the federal Education Department to let it take over a troubled chain of for-profit trade schools.<\/p>\n

But the organization\u2019s chairman, Randall K. Barton, told the education secretary, Betsy DeVos, that the foundation wanted to \u201chelp people live better lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

The purchase was blessed despite Dream Center\u2019s lack of experience and questionable finances<\/span> by an administration favorable to for-profit education. But barely a year later, the company tumbled into insolvency<\/span>, dozens of its colleges closed abruptly and thousands of students were left with no degree<\/span> after paying tens of thousands of dollars in tuition.<\/p>\n

Making matters worse, the college is accused of enrolling new students and taking their taxpayer-supported financial aid dollars<\/span> even after some of its campuses had lost their accreditation, which rendered their credits worthless<\/span>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have no particular problem with for-profit education per se<\/i>, though my impression is that few of those schools offer any more than a good public university, and I doubt that any of them offer the vibrant environment of a good public university. Even so, there probably are students who benefit from the more narrow-gauge environment of a highly specialized for-profit school; it occurs to me this might be the case with trade schools, though I’m really just thinking aloud.<\/p>\n

I have a serious problem with a publicly subsidized church owning a chain of for-profit schools, however, and a problem with that market sector being overseen by a Pious dilettante who has never in her life organized a bake sale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A story in today’s New York Times exemplifies the reasons that (1) churches should not be publicly subsidized via a privileged tax status, and (2) the country ought to be run by bona fide professionals rather than big donors. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10622"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10625,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions\/10625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}