by John Engle

During the waning years of the Obama presidency, the future of for-profit education (FPE) looked rather bleak. One of the biggest players, ITT Educational Services (ESI), the operator of the ITT Technical Institutes, was forced to close down entirely under the weight of repeated legal actions at the state and federal levels. Other big names, such as Apollo Education Group (NASDAQ:APOL), Adtalem Global Education (NYSE:ATGE) and Grand Canyon Education – which manage the University of Phoenix, DeVry University and Grand Canyon University, respectively – faced various degrees of financial and legal headwinds as well.