Meet the New For-Profit: The Low-Profit

"Doing well by doing good" is the business mantra of the for-profit-college industry. But one does not have to look far to find people who question the slogan's sincerity or the very legitimacy of that model. And that was even before reports of some companies' abusive student-recruiting practices and questionable educational standards fed a public sense that the billions in federal dollars flowing into these colleges may be benefiting their owners more than their students--much less taxpayers. For-profit colleges are not going to disappear. Still, even more so than higher education as a whole, the colleges do have a credibility problem. No law or policy can change a college hellbent on cutting corners to make a buck. But what if there were for-profit colleges organized as "benefit corporations" or "low-profit" limited-liability corporations? The author reports on a new business model that could make it easier for proprietary colleges to de-emphasize profits for the sake of their academic missions.