For-profits may have incentives to cut corners in pursuit of profits, but this trait is the flip side of valuable characteristics: the inclination to grow rapidly, readily tap capital and talent, maximize cost effectiveness, and accommodate customer needs. Alongside nonprofit and public providers, for-profits have a crucial role to play in meeting America’s 21st century educational challenges.

Despite the high-profile debate over the merits of for-profits, little is known about how these institutions differ from traditional schools. In "Crossing to the Dark Side? An Interview-Based Comparison of Traditional and For-Profit Higher Education," education expert Ben Wildavsky of the Kauffman Foundation interviews leaders from both sectors to take a closer look at the differences.

The observations and experiences of interviewees who have worked in both for-profit and not-for-profit higher education suggest that traditional colleges and universities will be badly mistaken if they assume that the travails of for-profits today mean that useful lessons cannot be drawn from their successes to date—and those likely to occur in the future.

Instead of involving the private sector, education policymakers have actually created policy and funding barriers that skew support to nonprofits and prevent for-profits from participating in programs aimed at improving teaching or learning.

The traditional Left-Right ideological continuum fails to capture the ways policymakers and the public confront questions about for-profit involvement in education.

For-profits and nonprofits both have a place in delivering quality education. Education policies should define the desired outcomes from government spending without specifying the processes used to achieve those outcomes.