By Felix von Wendorff. his article will try to summarize the rise of private universities in the US, and particularly the growing number of for-profit education providers, a key factor in the issue of why college education is so expensive – and getting even more so.
For those of you who have been looking at the recent developments among universities in the US, it could easily be compared to a libertarian’s wet dream: the private sector has finally been allowed to enter the higher education industry (yes, “industry”) – a “sector” which was previously successfully dominated by the government. More...

By Felix von Wendorff. Only a couple of decades ago, attending a US university as noble as UC Berkley cost $540 a year (US$2,756 in 2010 dollars). Now the pages have turned, and attending this fine public institution will set a family back more than $30,000 a year. At the uber-elite quasi-for-profit schools like Harvard and Stanford, the annual price tag can be upwards of $60,000. I say quasi-for-profit because they are not actually for-profits; they are research universities that use their profits to finance research. More...

By Brent Staples. The United States set out 40 years ago to ensure that people who qualified academically for higher education would not be turned away for financial reasons and would have access to college degrees that allowed them to move up on the social ladder. This plan required the states to subsidize public colleges and universities to keep tuition affordable, while the federal government furnished the poorest students with Pell Grants that largely covered the remaining costs. More...

By Chris Kirkham. The Obama administration on Thursday will publish new regulations intended to target for-profit career colleges that leave students with debts they cannot repay.
The U.S. Department of Education rules will sanction schools with students who carry too much debt compared with their earnings after graduation. Programs that fail to meet debt-to-income requirements for two out of three consecutive years would lose eligibility for federal student loans and grants -- the primary revenue stream at for-profit colleges. More...