Kaplan has been receiving as much as $1.5 billion annually in taxpayer-funded federal student aid. But students across the country have complained that Kaplan has engaged in deceptive or coercive recruiting.

James H. Shelton this week was named the first head of the education component of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a new corporation, dedicated to charitable ventures, that is funded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan.

In the for-profit college field, it appears that what works are preppy-sounding family or village names, evoking Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Amherst -- in other words, evoking exclusivity, nurturing, tradition, success, power.

The struggle is far from over to make higher education a place where student and taxpayer interests are placed at the forefront, where honest and effective education enterprises reap the greatest rewards, and where greedy and duplicitous operators are shown the door.