I was wondering if the quality of education is affected by whether a school is for-profit or not. I have read some reviews from unhappy students coming out of for-profit schools. I was wondering if anybody had some insight. Anything would be greatly appreciated!
For profit vs. Non profit dpt programs
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IMO the only difference is the cost of attendance. If both schools are accredited, go to the least expensive one. Period.
South College is the only for-profit PT school I am aware of. Remember, private vs state is not the same thing as profit vs non-profit. Essentially all private PT schools are classified as non-profits. Most would rather go to a state school d/t cost of attendance.
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There are only a small handful of for-profits out there and many are relatively new so it may be hard to find a lot of students who went to these schools. According to the APTA site these schools are for-profit:
University of Saint Augustine (they have 3 campuses with another on the way and they have 3 classes per year so you these students would probably be easier to find)
Rocky Mountain University of Health Sciences
South College (pending accreditation)
West Coast University (pending accreditation)
University of Saint Augustine (they have 3 campuses with another on the way and they have 3 classes per year so you these students would probably be easier to find)
Rocky Mountain University of Health Sciences
South College (pending accreditation)
West Coast University (pending accreditation)
Thanks for the info. Yeah the reason I ask is because there's a site with a lot of negative reviews for St. Augustine and the san marcos location is like 20 min away from my house. However, I think i'd rather go to a university that I know I'd get a good education out of.
I went to Univ. of St Augustine in FL and graduated 2011. I feel that my education was solid and felt well prepared to enter the workforce. I know Dr. Paris has retired since then and the school was sold to a corporation. With that said, the leadership is still there and it's hard to believe if they have declined in quality a whole lot. Anyways go to the cheapest school with the best Board exam passing rate.
Thanks for correcting me. I forgot that St. Augustine was for profit and wasn't aware of the others.
Do you have a link to the APTA page this came from?
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My mistake, it was CAPTE not APTA. Here's the link:
http://aptaapps.apta.org/accreditedschoolsdirectory/AllPrograms.aspx?UniqueKey=
You can set the filter to for-profit schools using the "key code" PRP, towards the bottom of the drop down. West Coast and South aren't on there since they are still pending accreditation, but I remember those schools popping up during previous conversations (I also double checked before posting). Speaking of South College there is a breakout session at this year's CSM that will be talking about their education model. The session I was supposed to go to got cancelled so I'm going to check it out.
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I took classes from a couple different for-profit schools when I was deployed because of their schedule flexibility. One school was great, while the other was garbage. There's a much smaller sample size to choose from but I imagine the same thing will happen as for-profit PT schools start becoming more common. To be fair though there are a lot of not-for-profit private and even public schools who aren't that great in regards board pass rates. As far as tuition goes I imagine the price difference between for-profit and not-for-profit is slim or nonexistent.
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Can you pass on the time/course name for this CSM session? I'm really interested in hearing that. I also had a session get cancelled on me (wonder if it was the same?)
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Yep, I'm packing to head back to CA for Christmas but I'll look it up in a bit. I think I had 5 of my sessions cancelled (all Federal section). I don't know if I just have bad luck or if a bunch of sessions got cancelled for some reason.
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I have great respect for some of the folks who helped start this program (many were alumni of my program), but this is going to be a hard sell, especially since the first class hasn't even graduated and attempted their boards yet. I don't want to hijack this thread and take it in a different direction but just wanted to throw that out there for later discussion.
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I had quite a few federal section CSM sessions get cancelled too....bummer.
Yes, I noticed there are a ton of military alumni here. I really wish they considered doing something like this in partnership with a state university that as already standing. For instance, my school (UNMC) is the afflicted military PA program. The PAs go to school in San Antonio but their degree is accredited from UNMC. We recently expanded to a satellite PT program in a rural setting in Nebraska. The students video in for lecture but still have in person labs. As a military vet, I feel very protective about the ability to do distance education. It's pure luck that I was able to go to school myself as my active duty hubby managed to pull 2 back to back assignments in the same location for me. Otherwise, PT school was a no for me (as it stands we are still doing a year apart). Its frustrating that so many other fields I looked at do have legitimate distance options (I was looking at a 1 year BSN program or a distance pharmacy program). I'm just not sure a brand new PT distance program was the way to do it.
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For profit universities are looked down upon by traditional academia. Many schools use to not even except transfers or admit graduate students from for profit universities. Also, large coporate HR departments have a biased against students that graduate for profit schools and usually will not even give them interviews. However for PTs it is very different.
PT is one of the rare circumstances where for profit schools graduate a huge part of the workforce. Way more than any other school. There are not many complaints from the PTs that graduated from for profits and the industry does not have complaints. They are not looked down upon by employers either. For profit schools really pump out graduates, maybe 20% of all new PTs every year. Although, I'm sure most applicants would rather go to non profit schools, in the PT world it really does not make a difference. Most likely this is do to having to pass a professional license test.
Some of the large state institutions are effectively are run like for profit schools anyways. Not much difference in my opinion. Just don't go to Trump U.
PT is one of the rare circumstances where for profit schools graduate a huge part of the workforce. Way more than any other school. There are not many complaints from the PTs that graduated from for profits and the industry does not have complaints. They are not looked down upon by employers either. For profit schools really pump out graduates, maybe 20% of all new PTs every year. Although, I'm sure most applicants would rather go to non profit schools, in the PT world it really does not make a difference. Most likely this is do to having to pass a professional license test.
Some of the large state institutions are effectively are run like for profit schools anyways. Not much difference in my opinion. Just don't go to Trump U.
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The idea of a DE is one thing, but a DE program that somehow cuts a year off the typical PT schedule seems too good to be true. My program is slightly shorter than some other programs, but we make up for it by spending pretty much 40 hours per week in class with no breaks during the year other than a couple of weeks for Christmas. Maybe these kids at South that graduate in the spring will surprise us all and ace the NPTE. If that's the case I will eat crow, but I doubt that happens. I wonder if there is a certain pass rate that a school must maintain to keep, or in this case gain, accreditation.
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Just looked it up, a program must average an 85% pass rate on the NPTE over a 2 year span, but it also says that if there is one year of data available that the scores for year one must indicate that a 2 year average of 85% is attainable. In other words if the program has an 83% pass rate the first year then getting an 87% the next to bring it up is obtainable. However, if they have a 70% pass rate year one then getting 100% the next year to bring the average up to the standard is most likely unattainable and I believe they wouldn't be accredited.
