DeVry University, a proprietary school, has used senior projects as a strategy to demonstrate its educational value to students, employers, and society. The senior project has also played a critical role in the major imperatives of a proprietary university: production of employable students and maintenance of accreditation. As a general education consultant to DeVry's technical senior projects for the last six years, the author has observed many of the recent changes in the uses and make up of the senior projects. This paper explores the way proprietary schools, specifically DeVry, have developed and how the senior project has interacted with the issues of pedagogy, responsiveness to student and employer interests, and accreditation. It examines the development of capstone projects for program accreditation requirements. In order to examine DeVry's use of the senior project to establish its identity as an educational institution and its students' roles as educated career seekers, it is important to look specifically at DeVry's history, the history of proprietary schools, the evolution of accreditation, and the development of capstone experiences or senior projects. These threads have been woven together to create a unique educational model.