I continue to watch the ongoing news about my industry– proprietary education, this week via the New America Foundation’s education bolg– and I continue to be alarmed, not because the proposed reforms are so untenable– the reforms are probably weaker than they need to be– but because the industry continues to undermine its own credibility by being so alarmist (“Taking a Page from the Tea Party‘). There’s nothing specific about the for-profit sector’s resistance to stricter regulation; it seems to be a common theme in every area of the U.S. economy.
Perhaps I can be accused of wishful thinking, but it seems to me that the era of wildly unregulated capitalism is coming to a loud, complaining, reckless stop. What’s so odd is that the relatively mildly regulated capitalism being proposed (in finances, the auto industry, medicine, housing, and education, so far) is likely to have so little impact on long term profits. (“Obama’s Bid to Change the Incentives that Drive For-Profit Higher Ed”). That gives the debate a sharply ideological edge, as if money was besides the point. It’s not.
