Not sure. I would suspect it may have to do with less funding from states helping to offset public state school tuition. This probably made it easier for privat

Not sure. I would suspect it may have to do with less funding from states helping to offset public state school tuition. This probably made it easier for private for-profit schools to charge high prices and still appear competitive. Now more students "needed"/relied on loans and the government jumped in to support them. It was probably harder to get thousands of people to pay thousands of dollars for a private no-name for-profit college when those that were "qualified" could go to a state school for much less.