


The fate of America’s for-profit colleges hinges on the election
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are at odds on many policy issues, but one topic is particularly personal for both: for-profit colleges. Mr Trump once owned a for-profit college, predictably called Trump University.
He agreed to pay $25m in 2016 to settle lawsuits brought by students alleging their alma mater had not taught them anything. Three years earlier, as California’s attorney-general, Ms Harris went after a different for-profit college. She sued the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges for “predatory and unlawful practices" and won $1.2bn.
The outcome of the upcoming election could be consequential for for-profit institutions. Ms Harris would probably want to crack down, while Mr Trump would probably loosen the reins. Both would claim they were acting in the name of fairness.
For-profit colleges have grown quickly, but their progress has not been steady (see chart). Enrolment tends to increase most during tough economic times. Between 2000 and 2010, for-profit college enrolment grew four-fold from 450,000 students to 2m.
Interest also grew in 2020 during the pandemic. For all of the attention paid to them by politicians, for-profit colleges are small players in the postsecondary market. For-profits accounted for only $14bn in revenue from tuition and fees in 2021-2022 compared with $81bn from non-profit private institutions that same year.
Keep up with the contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump with our US election forecast model For-profit colleges tend to receive outsize attention, and not of the positive kind. Many perform as expected, but the sector has been tarnished by scams. In 2018 the Century Foundation, a think-tank, studied federal-borrower defence claims, which
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