Summary of March 2011 CHEA/UNESCO Meeting on For-Profit Higher Education

March 21, 2011

A meeting on for-profit higher education was convened on 21 March 2011 in Washington, DC by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It brought together some 25 participants representing executives of for-profit colleges and universities, academic researchers who focus on this sector and accreditation and quality assurance experts. The executives of for-profit universities and colleges were mainly from the leading U.S. institutions such as Kaplan, Inc.,The University of Phoenix, Laureate Education and Career Education Corporation. A representative of an Indian for-profit provider, NIIT (USA) Inc., attended the meeting. Other participants included quality assurance agencies and academics from Egypt, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States, the International Finance Corporation and the Commonwealth of Learning.