In the twenty-first century, the largest collector of Pell Grant tuition would be the University of Phoenix, a nationwide open-enrollment “university” founded in 1976. Its students owed $35 billion in taxpayer-backed federal loans. Their default rate was higher than their graduation rate. More and more the vaunted Reaganite “private sector” was coming to operate this way. It was a catchment area set up to receive government funds—usually by someone well enough connected to know before the public did how and where government funds would be directed.
