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Title: For-profit colleges have lots of champions-and lots of problems
Topic: General News
Written By: Ed Deak
Date: Saturday, November 19 at 11:47
The Profit Chase
For-profit colleges have lots of champions�and lots of problems.
By Anya Kamenetz
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005, at 3:18 PM ET

You've seen this ad before, on the subway or at a bus shelter: An
attractive young ethnic type beams in three-quarter profile, against
a background of blue sky and clouds, looking off at � his future. At
the bottom appears an aspirational word like Apex or Phoenix or
Capella. Despite appearances, the product is not a
psychopharmaceutical; it's one of the nation's 2,000-odd for-profit
colleges.

So-called proprietary schools, which rely on tuition to both cover
their operating costs and turn a profit, enroll about 1.6 million of
the 20 million students at all accredited colleges nationwide; they
run 28 percent of all two-year colleges. Their enrollment is growing
four times faster than the sector as a whole, about 8 percent a year.
The largest is the Apollo Group, which operates the well-known
University of Phoenix and three other colleges. In all, Apollo has
176 locations, plus many online programs, with a total enrollment of
307,400 students in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Canada, up
there with the largest state university systems.

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