From a commenter: “These for profits constantly advertise on TV during daytime hours with most offering the same “opportunities”. I will never attend another one; as I learned my lesson. I attended one for two weeks before dropping out; as every day classes were in session, one hour was set aside about the financial responsibility of student loan repayments. The day I dropped out was when I went in class as usual; then word went around that classes would not be held that day; as a campus – wide meeting would be held about financial responsibility. I became annoyed and just left. I went in the next day and went into the office make it official. Needless to say, they and their main competitor went out of business about six years ago in this town. Others have cropped up recently, though.”

“As Cornell professor Noliwe Rooks and journalist Kai Wright have reported, black college enrollment has increased at nearly twice the rate of white enrollment in recent years, but a disproportionate number of those African-American students end up at for-profit schools. In 2011, two of those institutions, the University of Phoenix (with physical campuses in 39 states and massive online programs) and the online-only Ashford University, produced more black graduates than any other institutes of higher education in the country. Unfortunately, a recent survey by economist Rajeev Darolia shows that for-profit graduates fare little better on the job market than job seekers with high school degrees; their diplomas, that is, are a net loss, offering essentially the same grim job prospects as if they had never gone to college, plus a lifetime debt sentence.

Much of the American public does not understand the difference between for-profit, public, and private non-profit institutions of higher learning. All three are concerned with generating revenue, but only the for-profit model exists primarily to enrich its owners. The largest of these institutions are often publicly traded, nationally franchised corporations legally beholden to maximize profit for their shareholders before maximizing education for their students. While commercial vocational programs have existed since the nineteenth century, for-profit colleges in their current form are a relatively new phenomenon that began to boom with a series of initial public offerings in the 1990s, followed quickly by deregulation of the sector as the millennium approached. Bush administration legislation then weakened government oversight of such schools, while expanding their access to federal financial aid, making the industry irresistible to Wall Street investors.” (Mother Jones)