Becoming Real Colleges in the Financialized Era of U.S. Higher Education: The Expansion and Legitimation of For-Profit Colleges Open Access
Cottom, Tressie (2015)
Abstract
Are for-profit colleges real colleges? That question animates public debates, in part, because these market-based credentialing organizations account for 30 percent of U.S. higher education expansion in the first decade of the twenty first century. To be a real college is to be a credential granting organization that conforms to collective assumptions of legitimacy. This case study asks if for-profit colleges are real by asking if, and to what extent, they conform to collective accounts of what constitutes a legitimate college. I extend Elsbach's framework of legitimation accounts (1994), or discursive texts produced to justify an organization's rightness. Quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings; marketing and admissions materials; and legal actions find that for-profit colleges produced multiple comparative and justification accounts of their legitimacy for various audiences. But, I conclude that contrary to extant literature, for-profit colleges are not aiming for institutional homogeneity. Because their financialization constrains their investment in symbolic forms of educational legitimacy, for-profit colleges instead aim to manage multiple legitimate accounts as a normative organizational strategy. I include a discussion of the implications for stratification, policy, and theory.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Situating the Problem and Organization Of the Dissertation. 1
Organization of the Dissertation. 2
CHAPTER ONE: SOCIOLOGY OF HIGHER EDUCATION. 13
The U.S. Institutional Field of Higher Education. 14
History of the For-Profit College Sector. 17
The Wall Street Era of For-Profit Colleges. 18
CHAPTER TWO: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS AND RESEARCH DESIGN. 26
Legitimation Accounts and Higher Education Sectors. 33
Elites and The Rest of Us: The Making of Higher Education's Ruling Legitimation Account 36
Hypotheses: Legitimation Accounts, Audiences, And Strategies. 39
Research Design. 46
Data Sources. 48
Methods. 51
Summary Findings. 53
CHAPTER THREE: LEGITIMATION ACCOUNTS FOR MARKETS AND REGULATORS. 56
Findings. 57
Accreditation. 58
Extra-Institutional Actors and Legitimacy. 74
Status Groups and Differentiation. 79
Newbies, Working Students and G.I.s: The For-Profit College Status Group. 82
Legitimacy and Labor Market Correspondence. 90
CHAPTER FOUR: LEGITIMATION ACCOUNTS FOR PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS. 102
Findings. 104
The Telephone Call. 104
The Campus Tour. 106
A Calculated Hedge Against Unemployment. 109
Comparative Accounts: "Serious U"s and "Similar U"s. 110
Legitimating Without Promising: Labor Markets and Professional Entry. 113
CHAPTER FIVE: MANAGING MULTIPLE LEGITIMATION ACCOUNTS. 116
CHAPTER SIX: PIECING TOGETHER THE PUZZLE OF FOR-PROFIT COLLEGE EXPANSION. 129
Contributions. 139
Limitations. 140
Future Research. 140
REFERENCES. 141
Appendix A. Meta Analysis of For-Profit College Literature, Theory, Methods, and Data. 155
APPENDIX B. Chapter 3: "Crisis of Legitimacy" Methodology Notes. 169
APPENDIX C. Chapter 4; Courting Legitimacy; Methodology Notes. 173
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