Internationally, more students than ever are attending college. Between 2000 and 2014, the number of students in higher education globally more than doubled to 207 million, according to a paper (pdf) published by UNESCO, together with the International Institute for Educational Planning and the Global Education Monitoring Report. As government universities struggle to accommodate the swelling ranks of students, private colleges are burgeoning. The report found that enrolments in private colleges and universities account for 30% of all global enrolments. However, these private for-profit higher education institutions have been heavily criticized in some countries. In the US, a 2012 report found that some private institutions have higher than average tuition rates, recruit aggressively, have low student retention rates, high rates of loan default, and offer little job placement assistance. Reporting by ProPublica found that some private universities also employ deceptive marketing techniques with recruiters making false claims. As for-profit education companies face growing scrutiny and tightening regulation at home, many have looked overseas, particularly to Latin America, for growth. In 2015, over 60% of students in Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru were enrolled in private institutions, and over 80% in Chile and Paraguay. “The government has had no choice but to work with the private sector,” Fernando Iunes, global head of investment banking for Brazil’s Itaú BBA, told the New York Times (paywall). “It cannot meet the demand on its own.” Attending a private university is less common in Asia, where private enrollments make up 36% on student enrolments on average. But their popularity is growing in countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, according to the UNESCO report. US firm Laureate Education, which operates 70 institutions in 25 countries with more than 1 million students enrolled, is one company profiting from the global dearth of public universities. Th