1. Introduction -- 2. What is the Difference? Public Funding of For-Profit, Not-for-Profit, and Public Institutions -- 3. For-Profit Higher Education in the United Kingdom: The Politics of Market Creation -- 4. For-Profit Universities through the Eyes of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System: Warts and All -- 5. Social Capital and For-Profit Post-Secondary Institutions: A Planned Study -- 6. Stratification and the Public Good: The Changing Ideology of Higher Education -- 7. Who Attends For-Profit Institutions? The Enrollment Landscape -- 8. Enrollment and Degree Completion at For-Profit Colleges versus Traditional Institutions. .

This edited volume proposes that the phenomenon of private sector, financialized higher education expansion in the United States benefits from a range of theoretical and methodological treatments. Social scientists, policy analysts, researches, and for-profit sector leaders discuss how and to what ends for-profit colleges are a functional social good. The chapters include discussions of inequality, stratification, and legitimacy, differing greatly from other work on for-profit colleges in three ways: First, this volume moves beyond rational choice explanations of for-profit expansion to include critical theoretical work. Second, it deals with the nuances of race, class, and gender in ways absent from other research. Finally, the book's interdisciplinary focus is uniquely equipped to deal with the complexity of high-cost, low-status, for-profit credentialism at a scale never before seen. .