The U.S. taxpayer has unwittingly been the lead underwriter of the tremendous marketing success of the for-profit higher education sector but bearing most of the downside risks with few rewards.
Over the past three decades, for-profit colleges have designed a most successful business model, growing their enrollment at six times the rate of all universities.
Our future economy will need at least 40 percent of its citizens to earn college diplomas, but we are producing graduates at a rate of less than 30 percent of the population – and taking six years to do so. To their credit, the for-profits have made important progress in addressing the nation’s graduation gridlock by catering to working adult students while traditional universities have made only modest efforts to accommodate them.