Not all talk is cheap. Especially not if it comes from the mouths of professors, former corporate executives, or Washington insiders who understand the workings of the $20-billion for-profit higher-education industry and how impending tougher regulations might affect it. Then the talk can be worth hundreds of dollars an hour, thanks to the growing…

A newly compiled analysis by the U.S. Department of Education and obtained by "The Chronicle" shows that 114 private nonprofit degree-granting colleges were in such fragile financial condition at the end of their last fiscal year that they failed the department's financial-responsibility test. Colleges that fail the test are subject to extra…