This edited volume proposes that the phenomenon of private sector, financialized higher education expansion in the United States benefits from a range of theoretical and methodological treatments. Social scientists, policy analysts, researchers, and for-profit sector leaders discuss how and to what ends for-profit colleges are a functional social good. The chapters include discussions of inequality, stratification, and legitimacy, differing greatly from other work on for-profit colleges in three ways: First, this volume moves beyond rational choice explanations of for-profit expansion to include critical theoretical work. Second, it deals with the nuances of race, class, and gender in ways absent from other research. Finally, the book's interdisciplinary focus is uniquely equipped to deal with the complexity of high-cost, low-status, for-profit credentialism at a scale never before seen.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University, USA, and a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, USA. She is a former Fellow at the Center for Poverty Research at the University of California, Davis, USA, and at the Microsoft Social Media Collective. William A. ("Sandy") Darity, Jr., is Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics, and Director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, USA. He has served as Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and was the founding Director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke. ContributorsVictor H.M. Borden, Indiana University, USABonnie K. Fox Garrity, Accord Integrated Academic and Financial Integration, USADavid J. Harding, University of California, Berkeley, USAThomas A. Mays, Miami University, USAJane Rochmes, Stanford University, USARhonda Vonshay Sharpe, Bucknell University, USADavid Diego Torres, Rice University, USAGaye Tuchman, University of Connecticut, USAJonathan White, University and College Union, UK