There's a distinction to be made between how the schools are organized as business entities and how they actually bring in and spend money.

You're correct that schools organized as for-profit business entities have a bad name and are dying back.

But even state schools and universities that are nonprofits on paper can conduct themselves in ways that are profit-driven in practice.

It's kind of like the Hollywood accounting practices where a movie that has brought in an enormous box-office haul is treated as only breaking even on paper. As long as the numbers line up right, you can be a "nonprofit" where salary and perks for top figures are exorbitant.

The massive run-up in tuition prices has not been confined to just private or for-profit schools. Public and private universities alike have gorged themselves on federally-guaranteed student loans. Whether the loan gets repaid or not doesn't matter to the school. They get all the money up front; the feds are the ones who must later try to collect. Schools have used this money to drastically increase the scope of their bureaucracies and facilities, often while paying teaching staff less:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/opinion/sunday/the-real-re... (https://archive.ph/Ju3ro)