For-Profit and No-Profit

They may be converging. From The Chronicle:

While officials at for-profit colleges anxiously await the release of regulations that could limit borrowing by their students, rumors about the content and timing of the new rules abound.

Here's the picture to go with it. American Public's Walmart bounce is evident.

In other news,  alternatives to for-pay education are maturing. This New York Times piece sums up the choices, with links.

And this one sums up the Edupunk movement, including Peer-to-Peer University.  Quote:

P2PU’s mission isn’t to develop a model and stick with it. It is to “experiment and iterate,” says Ms. Paharia, the former executive director of Creative Commons. She likes to talk about signals, a concept borrowed from economics. “Having a degree is a signal,” she says. “It’s a signal to employers that you’ve passed a certain bar.” Here’s the radical part: Ms. Paharia doesn’t think degrees are necessary. P2PU is working to come up with alternative signals that indicate to potential employers that an individual is a good thinker and has the skills he or she claims to have — maybe a written report or an online portfolio.

Some of my own ideas about that last thought are found in "Getting Rid of Grades."