ABSTRACT
Most discussions of for-profit higher education rely on the simple shock value of presenting education as a business to get readers’ attention. Calling students “customers,” not bothering with the humanities, skipping the physical accoutrements that make college the ivy-walled American dream-these are the characteristics editorial writers and reporters focus on when they want to throw harsh light onto the dark specter of higher education as a growth industry. Lost in that showman’s spotlight, however, is an even scarier fact: the specter is getting closer. In the past twenty years, more than 500 new for-profit colleges and universities have opened their doors-at the fouryear level, for-profits have increased their numbers from 18 to 192.1 A quarter of the $750 billion spent each year on higher education stems from private, proprietary investment.2 Analysts predict this segment will grow by about 20 percent a year, until it finally displaces nonprofit education-or what for-profit educators call the “last remaining government monopoly in the world.”3 Today, forty for-profit education ventures trade publicly, up from one decade ago. We’ve moved beyond the moment when the idea of selling stock in a university was a laughable exception to the rule.
