There is a big difference between a for-profit school, like the University of Phoenix, and for-profit companies in the education space which work with all types

There is a big difference between a for-profit school, like the University of Phoenix, and for-profit companies in the education space which work with all types of schools as vendors or sell directly to students. LeapFrog in the first paragraph is a for-profit company in the education sector not a school - Leapfrog makes things like software that teaches young kids to read and tablets that have education-related games on them. This is a ridiculous article, especially coming from the "co-director of the media-and-technology program" at Columbia Business School. It does not really answer "Why?" nor is it clear the author knows what "for-profit education" means. Further, for-profit education of any definition doesn't appear to have some huge failure rate above other types of startup businesses or a specific reason why failure occurs when it does. And the article completely brushes over success stories. I used Kaplan recently; it is for profit, worth billions and is an 80 year old company, and I had a positive experience as a customer. For-profit schools, like for-profit health care, like for profit military work, is a debate worth having. But this article, which basically says "in education don't try to do big things - a few rich guys have failed trying that", is not helping anyone. Build an education-related business however you want, big or small. Education is full of problems needing fixing and there is no reason the solutions can't come from more for-profit companies that just don't suck at it.