Witness Tampering, You Say?

Interesting from Instapundit:

Did Senator Harkin's office engage in witness tampering?

The answer isn't exactly clear, but it looks like in the course of his ongoing push for stronger oversight for for-profit schools, some of the witnesses that Senator Harkin called might have been reading from a script- which looks a little shady at best and potentially witness tampering at worst.

Instapundit's issue with all of this is, of course, the perceived 'war' on for-profit schools. I halfway agree with him on it- by going after for-profit schools, it enables their state funded counterparts to escape stronger, much needed scrutiny- especially given the exploding cost of getting a four year degree.

However, where I depart from Instapundit is on the quality of the for-profit schools themselves. Having worked as a financial aid counselor for a for-profit school, my experience has been that the product they are offering is obscenely overpriced and extremely low quality. Many of these online schools so heavily advertised on television really are little more than degree mills that coincidentally profit heavily off of student loans, while at the end of the day, students are saddled with debt that cannot afford and even less hope of a decent job than their mainstream counterparts.

If there are good examples of for-profit schools out there that provide a quality educational product, I'd like to hear about them- but while Instapundit is to be lauded for calling for the proverbial net to be cast a little wider, Senator Harkin isn't wrong either- the abuses at some of these degree mills are worthy of a closer look by someone in authority.