Agile predators: private equity and the spread of shareholder value strategies to US for-profit colleges

I argue that growth in private equity and publicly traded ownership of US for-profit colleges has created new shareholder-value pressures for schools to maximize returns for investors. Privately held firms, which had long dominated the sector, were converted to private equity ownership through 88 buyouts since 1987. Private equity managers then used IPOs to establish 20 of 35 publicly traded firms that operated in the sector. I use longitudinal...