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Why is it that introducing profit as a motivator into higher education makes that endeavor suspect, while we don't seem to believe this to be true for journalism, publishing, media, technology or any other information or service industry?

"I often find it difficult to convince those in "real" colleges that they are in dialogue with for-profit higher education. After all, they're not "our kind of students". This juxtaposition of MOOCs and for-profits is the first time I think this has worked particularly well. As I said at the lecture, we get to MOOCs by way of the lessons venture capitalists have learned from for-profits' uneven success in penetrating the real currency of higher education: prestige. As the founder of 2tor has been rumored to have said, they can't build prestige so they'll just borrow it from existing institutions."

"While $199 might cover just a single credit (or much less) at a typical college, the same fee buys a month of unlimited classes at New Charter University, one of two online schools by startup firm UniversityNow. The pricing structure is similar to online college course provider StraighterLine's model, launched in 2008, which charges $99 per month of enrollment, plus $49 per class."

""Tiffin University must disengage from our business relationship with Altius," Paul Marion, Tiffin's president, confirmed in an interview."

"The consortium is interested, however, in how its members might avail themselves of sophisticated online tools while limiting their reliance on the education-technology industry, said Lauren Kay Robel, provost of Indiana University at Bloomington. "There is a rather widespread concern about the notion that the core of our academic mission, on the teaching side, is being essentially developed by for-profit companies," Ms. Robel said in an interview."

A coalition of faculty groups has declared war against online learning, particularly massive open online courses (MOOCs), because it said it believes that the fast expansion of this form of education is being promulgated by corporations - specifically for-profit colleges and universities and education technology companies - at the expense of student education and public interest.

Plenty of smart observers, however, say that the problem with Altius was its overreach, and that the system worked.

"Enrollment at America's largest for-profit university was about 460,000 students five years ago. Now it's 213,000."

"As the Embedded For-Profit industry develops, he predicts it will further curtail professors' autonomy, already somewhat weakened by colleges' use of outside companies to host learning-management systems - and more recently to help manage and produce online-education programs."

"A study released last week found that students who start college less well-prepared can struggle in online courses, and that in-person courses would be better for them academically. "