As has been noted at PBC, NAS executive director Peter Wood concluded an excellent series of articles at nas.org with the assertion that for-profit colleges can provide much-needed institutional diversity to the whole system of higher education. But it is important to note that Wood is not talking so much about the present for-profit situation, but about the prospective one. His assessment of the present situation is more stringently critical:

The for-profit universities have identified a very lucrative market niche in going after these left-behind students, but it is a niche that lasts only so long as there are large amounts of loose federal dollars available through our student-loan system for individuals who have a combination of poor academic preparation, little sign of academic aptitude, poor credit risk, and time on their hands. Some of these students do indeed beat the odds. They attend the for-profit degree programs, gain real skills, and get started on a worthwhile career ladder. But so far, it looks like a large majority of students in these programs end up floundering — and deeper in debt.

Just so, and it should be pointed out that for-profits’ students have four times the default rate as the non-profits’ students, and that the for-profits stand to drain the Treasury of half a trillion dollars in the next ten years.