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You’d think that for-profit education’s effort to reach out to help the homeless would be a good thing. And you’d be wrong. Consider this article:

Benson Rollins wants a college degree. The unemployed high school dropout who attends Alcoholics Anonymous and has been homeless for 10 months is being courted by the University of Phoenix. Two of its recruiters got themselves invited to a Cleveland shelter last October and pitched the advantages of going to the country’s largest for-profit college to 70 destitute men…The boom in for-profit education, driven by a political consensus that all Americans need more than a high school diploma, has intensified efforts to recruit the homeless. Such disadvantaged students are desirable because they qualify for federal grants and loans, which are largely responsible for the prosperity of for-profit colleges.

Soliciting students in homeless shelters seems a bit questionable, though I’m sure traditional universities have their own horror stories. And, no doubt, University of Phoenix could provide cases of students who have benefited from their “educate the homeless with federal student loans” program. In Canada, the Apollo Group (parent company of U of Phoenix) operates Meritus U, though I haven’t a clue of how MU is related to federal programs.

For-profit education is big business (both Laureate and Apollo have revenue in excess of several billion dollars annually) As a result, the for-profit sector is experiencing new levels of scrutiny (have a look at this PBS documentary). But, credibility of the field is growing, as reflected by Bill Clinton’s appointment as an honorary chancellor for Laureate.