The fate of America’s for-profit colleges hinges on the election

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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