Frontline investigates the boom in for-profit higher education, tracing how companies like the University of Phoenix, Kaplan, and Corinthian Colleges grew into billion-dollar enterprises by enrolling students with federal financial aid. Correspondent interviews take viewers inside recruiting centers where admissions staff work off enrollment quotas, and former students describe signing up for programs that left them deep in loan debt with credentials employers did not recognize. Executives defend their business model on camera, arguing they serve working adults and veterans that traditional universities ignore, while regulators and financial-aid experts lay out how federal Title IV money flows into these schools regardless of whether graduates ever find jobs in their field. The film follows the money from Wall Street investors down to a single mother enrolling in an online nursing program, showing how the incentives line up for the schools and against the students. It closes on the unresolved fight in Washington over how much oversight, if any, this industry should face.