- The accreditation was recently renewed on February 12, 2020.
- The next accreditation review is scheduled for February 28, 2024.
Remedial services
Academic/career counseling services
Employment services for current students
Placement services for program completers
Weekend college
If students come back for a second year, that suggests they are satisfied and able to succeed. The schools with satisfied freshmen should score above that dark gray 50% mark.
How many people transfer out of ATA Career Education within 8 years of entering? If you're considering a school with lots of transfers, be sure to find out why it was a bad fit for so many other students!
Across the country, graduation rates are surprisingly low. In fact, Forbes Magazine suggests that they are unacceptably low. However, from another point of view, sometimes graduation rates simply reflect the relative preparation of the students who enter. Colleges with a mission to help people coming from less advantaged backgrounds, such as first-generation and low-income students, may have low graduation rates despite relatively strong outcomes for students who face many obstacles to success. Without the context provided in these views of completion rates, it can be tricky to separate predatory schools that take financial advantage of under-prepared students from those that are actively seeking to encourage and help those students.
For the consumer choosing a school, once you have narrowed your list to those schools that you can afford and that seem likely to admit you, consider the outcome measures in this section and choose the specific measures that best describe your plans. Very simply, schools with high graduation rates and high loan repayment rates will likely give you the best opportunity to succeed.
We took a close look lagging success for students with financial need in a case study. Here's a chance to compare schools based on student successes with a better appreciation of how circumstances may impact success. One word of caution: the statistics for some categories may consist of only a handful of students -- see the details by hovering or long-pressing on the bars.
Even if you don't need financial aid, the ability of past students to successfully repay loans speaks to the value of the education received.
This snapshot shows the status of students in their federal loan repayments in 2016, having departing from the school in 2012. The green wedges are the alumni in good standing, so look for a school with lots of green!
How does the percentage of students who fill those green wedges at ATA Career Education compare to other schools? The interactive bars below show you the distribution of how alumni at other schools are doing.
Schools are required to report the ratio of students per instructor, but look for a small number of students for every full-time instructor as your best indicator of personal attention and a modern well-integrated curriculum.
Here's an opportunity to explore the faculty's diversity. For many schools, attracting a diverse teaching faculty can be a challenge. It's important to judge their success with the reality check of what their peer schools have accomplished.
Who might be attending school with you? We'll look at what degrees most students have received, whether they are on campus or online, a little about their path, and the overall student body size. Our aim is to give some idea of what the campus culture might be.
This donut chart shows you what degrees were awarded by ATA Career Education last year, and gives you a good idea of this school's focus. Make sure this school's focus matches your goals.
There are performance problems with many online-focused schools -- you can read about this in an Ididio case study, but you may want some online options to give you greater flexibility.
You will be most happy at a school with a large number of students who are like you, whether that's someone who enters right out of high school, or someone who is transferring, or someone who isn't ready to work towards a degree.
Another breakdown that can help is a view of the student body size. Here we show student counts, including part-time versus full-time students. If the proportion of students that best describes you is relatively small, then is it possible that another school might be better-prepared to meet your needs?
The NPR article A Campus More Colorful Than Reality: Beware That College Brochure emphasizes the importance of judging a school's diversity based on solid data as promotional materials are eager to suggest a multicultural student body.
Student race is only categorized for non-international students, and international students are listed separately.
The age distribution at a school can tell you a lot about its mission. If you're looking for a traditional undergraduate experience, you may prefer to see students who are mostly younger than 25 (lighter shades), but if you want support as a returning student, a large number of students 25 and older (darker shades) may better suit your needs.
There are multiple outside factors that can affect the gender balance of students recruited by schools. As an example, within less-affluent families higher education is more frequently attained by women than by men, a phenomenon explored in the Atlantic. Therefore, schools serving lower-income populations may be more likely to see a gender imbalance. On the other hand, some colleges may offer predominantly degrees that are stereotypically associated with a single gender, affecting the ratio of men to women accordingly.
In the folders below, you can explore your options for study. The folders are grouped and colored by broad field, and you can see the number of students who have completed degrees in each field by following the colors in our chart showing graduations. You can...
- Filter the programs by the award level that interests you.
- Use the search key to limit the listings to all relevant progrmas.
- Select a specific program from this menu to see some great details!
- Nursing
- Healthcare Technologists and Aids
- Healthcare office support
- Nursing Aids
Most schools publish tuition rates that give them room to offer both scholarships and financial aid where applicable. Your best guess at what you might pay is to see what others with similar family incomes have paid. A more tailored and accurate estimate is available at this school's net price calculator.
With their net price calculators, many colleges and universities give an idea of what merit-based aid might accompany need-based aid. For schools that share such data, we also provide financial aid data in the Finanical Aid sections.
There are some caveats to consider when using the net price estimates:
- The net price calculation is weighted by this school's proportion of students living on- and off-campus and this school's estimate of off-campus costs, which may cause the net price methodology be a bit inconsistent from school to school.
- Parental income and student financial aid eligibility is sometimes more complicated than the simple family income number reported here.
- The net price calculation for all students is inclusive of students who received any institutional or government aid, but at the family income levels the net price only considers the tuition paid by those who qualified for federal aid.
You can get a little better guess at what you would pay by using this school's net price calculator.
The donut, based on 31 full-time first-time degree seeking students at ATA Career Education, shows the percentage of those who received any financial aid (including merit-based scholarships), subdivided by family income.
Let's look over the past few years at what freshmen who received any financial aid actually paid for tuition, fees, books, and living expenses on average, and how that compares to the tuition usually paid for other private universities in your context group. Public universities only report net price for in-state students.
See how this school's published costs have changed over the year, and how their cost trends compare with other private schools.
It's important to remember that a school's published costs may not be indicative of what it will actually cost to attend. Time magazine wrote about this in their article Yes, you can get a college to cut its tuition price. Nonetheless, this inflation-adjusted look at the historic annual costs for tuition, fees, books, and supplies can give you an idea of the costs you might expect in the coming years. Comparing the total costs inclusive of room and board (if applicable) with the annual net price estimates in the previous tab will help you determine the financial aid package to expect.
Private and public universities' charges are difficult to compare due to the in-state and out-of-state price differences of public universities, and therefore we only compare ATA Career Education to other private schools within your chosen context group.
Here's a quick summary of costs to attend ATA Career Education. You will find the most up-to-date information at their website for admissions.
Understanding the rules and process that determine who gets financial aid can be intimidating. Here are some quick links to help:
Visit ATA Career Education's Net Price Calculator for the most accurate estimate of your anticipated costs. Every school publishes a Net Price Calculator that does its best to give you a fair estimate of what you might expect to pay. Many calculators consider your high school record as part of the calculation. This will be far more accurate than any of the averages or published tuition values that you see here.
FederalStudentAid, a government site that will walk you through the federal financial aid process. There are a number of kinds of student loans and other aid, and this site can walk you through all of the choices you will need to make.
This school does not report any housing for students.
Where a school spends and collects its money can suggest a lot about the educational experience it offers. The tabs below offer a look at spending that is important for the quality of your experience if you attend.
Instructional expenses are primarily the salary and benefits paid to the heart of a school: its full-time instructors. High expenditures in this area suggest care in hiring enough highly qualified full-time faculty to provide personal attention and up-to-date subject-area excellence.
You can find a myriad of articles about the enrollment crises expected across US colleges and universities due to fewer births during the 2008 recession and other demographic shifts. The end result to you is that you need to protect your college investment by researching the financial stability of schools that you are considering. Many of our metrics are based on the excellent advice of Forbes' Financial Health Grades.
Ididio does not want to see you stuck with debt and no degree.
The core operating margin is the percentage by which core revenues exceed (or, when negative, fall short of) core expenses, so higher is better here. This margin excludes finances for non-academic expenses such as housing, hospitals, or other independent operations. For schools with large endowments, this measure can be volitile from year-to-year without indicating concern because investment losses and gains are driving this figure, but if an institution's margin is trending downwards or consistently negative, you should be concerned.
ATA Career Education is a private for-profit school, meaning that its annual goal is to make a profit for its shareholders. The other types of schools are public or not-for-profit, and profit is not a goal.
We divided revenue and expenses for ATA Career Education into categories to give some insight to what may have influenced peaks and ditches in the chart above. The purple shades correspond most directly to student education. The blue shades, auxiliary expenses and revenue, are often related to room and board. We show investment gains and losses in apricot.
