[agzg]

Perhaps that and the fact that education, particularly for-profit education, works in a counter-cyclical market. As economic outlook brightens (and for some it is), fewer people enroll in school, because the costs of going to school (explicit and implicit) outweigh the benefits of putting off working for 3 to 4 years. Enrollments were at their highest in 2008, 2009, 2010 because of the hopelessness of the job market (which is still pretty icky).

Combined with the harsh press, of course, could mean a drop in enrollments. Those companies that have ground-based technical and vocational sides (Everest, etc) are faring a little better but their enrollments drop almost exclusively because of the changes in the job market, since they're not affected as much by national press and more by local (so, problems at an Everest campus in Illinois do not necessarily affect enrollments at an Everest campus in Phoenix).