A new campus rises almost every week, but critics worry that some may be 'junk universities' With its endless expanse of bleak, cinder-block tenements, this city north of the Mexican capital seems an unlikely setting for a business success story.
Maxie Burch knew something was wrong when his campus e-mail account stopped working one recent morning. Then a maintenance man showed up to change the locks on his office door at Grand Canyon University, where the associate professor of Christian studies had taught for eight years. At 3:30 that afternoon, two security guards and a university official arrived to escort him from the campus.
With its endless expanse of bleak, cinder-block tenements, this city north of the Mexican capital seems an unlikely setting for a business success story. But within days of opening a new campus here in 2002, the privately run Technological University of Mexico was mobbed with more than 2,000 applicants. The reason: It offered a mix of practical, job-oriented education and brand recognition, at a price residents could afford.
Yet another private-equity investor has entered the for-profit higher-education industry. Liberty Partners, a $1.8-billion fund based in New York City, announced on Wednesday that it had acquired...