Pretty much all education. IDK if you get this (you may) but the difference between profit and not for profit isnt the money they make, its what they are allowed to do to get the money and what *percent* of the money they make that they are allowed to keep. The former aspect is mostly irrelevant, since NFPO schools can't randomly jack up the tuition year to year and RVU wouldn't do it either, if it wants students to return.
The latter is an important point. every medical school but RVU (and nearly every undergraduate and graduate school in america, for that matter) has NFPO status and as such they can only keep a certain percentage as profit/rainy day funds/CEO earnings. The rest has to be put directly back into the school. But a percent is not a raw number, so if you make a lot more money, that percent earns you more to keep. Touro works on the theory that if one school makes x money, 30 schools makes 30x money. While there are only 3 medical schools (4 if you count New York Medical College), there are probably 12 or 15 other schools attached to the name. One liberal arts school, one law school and then a bunch of vocational schools that Touro bought and changed the business model of. I will honestly say that some of these vocational schools are shady as heck, but the medical schools are entirely separate from that. They just share a founding institution.
The chronicle of higher education lauds them as expert businessmen. They current (last 3 years or so) CEO salaries have been due to really shrewd business decisions like giving second lives to previously failing schools and creating online programs they then sell for huge profits (which again, are saved at a certain allowed percent and re-invested at the remainder). As chronicle states: "Touro College, by Moody's, from Ba2 to Ba1. Applies to $48-million in outstanding bonds. Reasons cited include the New York institution's five consecutive years of large budget surpluses following waste cutting changes, expectations that the college will be able to manage its rapid expansion plan, and the income it gained from the sale of its online program, TUI."
The company is turning 48 million in profit. You should see the money we get pumped into TouroCOM-NY. I can't speak for if that extra money is seen at TUCOM or TUNVCOM, but I know that a huge sum of the money goes into keeping alive NYMC, which is basically a fiscal black hole, but is too important to the state (and now Touro) to allow to fail. And yes, our CEO might as well drive a gold plated Lotus which shoots $100 bills out of the exhaust pipe, but they got that way by being nationally recognized amazing investors and "company flippers". Now this is not to *defend* touro... it doesn't really need defending... it's just the most cited example of a NFPO DO school that is clearly rolling in money. I wanted to point out how that happens. Touro did it mostly by buying down and out colleges and turning them into well publicized money making machines (some of higher quality than others. truth be told). RVU doesn't need to follow the same rules, but honestly, I still think it will follow the same rules. The for profit status just allows it to do whatever it wants with its money. In the past it has led to some disasterous results, but in the past every school did something totally different. Nowadays since the other 250ish medical schools all work in one way, RVU has to emulate that method pretty closely whether it wants to or not. So the for-profit status seems like somewhat of a red herring to me, at least at this early stage of its existance.
Cant help myself: I'm sure some sort of jewish stereotype about frugality with money might come into play here too. But they definitely know how to get quality as cheaply as possible.
