I really did not expect private for-profit schools to falter so quickly. The latest school to be in trouble is Anthem Education, which, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, will be closing two of its three Missouri locations. While the school, which has 34 locations around the country, did not confirm the closures, it conceded that it is going through tough financial times. It has filed notice of probable layoffs in several states.

This is the second major for-profit school to get into trouble recently. Corinthian Colleges, one of the largest with more than 100 campuses, is closing all its colleges. While U.S. senator Tom Harkin conducted a two-year campaign against for-profits, Corinthian’s problem stemmed specifically from investigations by the U.S. Department of Education of alleged false and misleading practices.

Anthem, one of the schools targeted by Harkin, has seen a severe drop in enrollment. Harkin’s report said that its numbers fell from 21,696 in 2006 to 12,792 in 2010.

I thought that for-profits would be more nimble than this. I thought that they could cut their costs in response to declines in demand. But I seem to have been wrong.

Ironically, Inside Higher Education reported the news about Anthem the same day that it reported on a talk by Bill Gates, whose foundation has spent half a billion dollars trying to reform higher education. Gates praised for-profit schools for their student support systems. IHE quoted Gates as saying, “For-profits know within 10 minutes when a student hasn’t gone to class so they can figure out why.”

But these days they don’t have so many students to worry about.