This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 10th, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The market share for for-profit higher education is growing.

As such, established constituencies, universities and community colleges have felt a pinch.

For Neil McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom,

the question should be, why should anyone care that a school

is for-profit or non-profit?

A lot of people, at least in Washington, seem to care whether or not a college university runs for

profit and a lot of people at least in Washington seem to have a presumption

that if you're running for profit you are a bad institution educationally and you're probably

trying to rip off both taxpayers and the students you're supposedly educating.

Who is leading this charge?

Right now, the charge is being taken up, again,

in Washington, in government, by Senator Tom Harkin,

who's the chair of the Senate Health Education, Laborersorers and Pensions Committee.

But others have taken it up.

George Miller, the representative, Democrat representative from California is the House counterpart to Harkin and he is very

Concerned shall we say about for-profit schools but also driving this and I think that it's something that hasn't really been talked

about are of course not-for-profit schools public especially community colleges but

also four-year institutions, private nonprofit schools that are very concerned

that they're having to compete with for-profit institutions that are taking

bigger and bigger parts of or shares of the market.

...