“One kind earns a profit. And nowadays that’s enough to make you suspect.”

The Obama administration has trained its regulatory beam on for-profit colleges. In this excellent piece, The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson lays out the administration’s plan to crack down on the industry. I urge you to read the entire piece. Then you won’t be surprised when this scenario plays out. A search of the website of the Career College Association shows 23 colleges in North Carolina.

To oversee the for-profits from a perch at the all-seeing Education Department, President Obama last year appointed Robert Shireman, an activist who had spent much of his career chastising for-profit schools. Like most activists, he himself was not-for-profit. This spring Shireman gave a speech to school administrators that signaled Washington’s intense interest in the schools. He singled out for-profit companies by name, ticking them off one by one—from Kaplan to DeVry, Strayer to the University of Phoenix. With heavy sarcasm he “congratulated” them for the large number of students they had recently enrolled, despite “these difficult economic times,” and expressed mock admiration for the size of their revenue streams.

Then he dropped the sarcasm and compared the schools to the financial companies that had run amok before the collapse of 2008, and reminded them, pointedly, of the severe regulations that might be imposed as a consequence.

“Nice business you got there,” Shireman seemed to be saying, sniffing the carnation in his lapel. “I’d hate to see anything happen to it.”