Wall Street tried getting into higher education. Disaster ensued.

Sébastien Thibault fo BI

In the early 2000s, the business of for-profit college was booming. After the University of Phoenix's parent company, the Apollo Group, went public in 1994, others were close on its heels: Corinthian, ITT Tech, and Kaplan each had IPOs in the 1990s, netting tens of millions of dollars and setting off tremendous periods of growth.