Learning Ecosystems

WASHINGTON — Love ’em or hate ’em — and many of this city’s current power brokers seemingly fall into the latter category right now — for-profit colleges are attracting students in ever-growing numbers, as made powerfully clear by an Education Department report released Wednesday.

The report, an annual study of college enrollments, prices and degrees awarded, includes data on the number of students who enrolled in various types of postsecondary institutions throughout the 2008-9 academic year. As seen in the table below, the statistics show that for-profit colleges enrolled a total of 3.2 million students, 11.8 percent of the nearly 27.4 million students who studied at all institutions that year.