Analysis Dissects News Coverage of For-Profit Colleges

A May 2010 article in The Philadelphia Inquirer sparked an “all-out war” between for-profit colleges and the U.S. government, a new study concludes.  The study, by the president of Colorado Technical University at Kansas City, a proprietary institution, analyzes 78 articles that appeared from November 2008 to December 2010, categorizing them as negative, neutral, or positive. It identifies three distinct phases of news coverage: recriminations (against for-profits), resistance (by the colleges), and recalcitrance (by the colleges’ critics).