Despite scandal, for-profit education offers valuable model - Steven Pearlstein, Washington Post

Last week's revelations about the high prices, uneven performance and shady marketing practices of for-profit universities have now cast a dark cloud over what had been the fastest-growing segment of higher education. Giant companies that pay big bonuses and use high-pressure sales tactics to foist overpriced services on unsophisticated consumers who take on more debt than they can handle -- tell me if this doesn't sound like the educational equivalent of the subprime mortgage scandal. I have two reasons to care about this. The first is that one of the biggest for-profits, Kaplan University, is part of The Washington Post Co., to which it has provided the handsome profits that have helped to cover this newspaper's operating losses. Although we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we've all benefited from its financial success.