Academic Libraries in For-Profit Schools of Higher Education

Jinnie Y. Davis is Librarian Emerita at the North Carolina State University Libraries; e-mail: jinnie_davis@ncsu. edu. Mignon Adams is Professor Emeritus at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia; e-mail: m.adams@ usp.edu. Larry Hardesty is retired library director at Austin College; e-mail: [email protected]. Davis made a presentation on this topic at the 5th Kaser Lecture at Indiana University on April 1, 2010. The authors extend our gratitude for comments on an early version of the manuscript from Larry Cooperman, Everglades University; William Crowe, University of Kansas; Stephanie Davidson and Shane DeGarmo, The Ohio Board of Regents; Marc Gartler, Madison Public Library. © Jinnie Y. Davis, Mignon Adams, and Larry Hardesty For-profit schools constitute the fastest-growing sector of higher education institutions in the United States.1 Yet accompanying the phenomenal growth of these proprietary colleges and universities has been considerable controversy over the role that the profit motive should play in higher education.2 The literature of higher education contains increasingly more works about proprietary schools. The library literature, however, offers little in this arena. Through this article, the authors seek to introduce the library readership to U.S. for-profit colleges and universities. We summarize their history and their characteristics, and we explore reasons for their success and present areas in which these schools appear to excel. With regard to their library services and resources, we focus on issues of concern based specifically on our experience with academic libraries in proprietary schools operating in the state of Ohio. Finally, we suggest ways in which these for-profit institutions can address the challenges faced by their libraries.