This century has been a dramatic era for the for-profit higher-education industry. Enrollment at for-profit schools more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2010, but the sector was bruised and battered during years of clashes with the Obama administration, which sought to rein in abuses such as inflating job-placement rates and using high-pressure sales techniques to induce students to sign up. More than one in six for-profit colleges has disappeared from federal financial-aid programs since 2010. Other major institutions have remained open, albeit under new and often more modest circumstances. The remaining for-profit schools may face less federal regulatory pressure under a friendly Trump administration, but states are stepping in to add new layers of oversight. The remaining for-profit schools are forced to innovate new ways that students pay for school, such as giving students one free course to be taken in the last year of their degree for every three they pay for and successfully complete. This article discusses how for-profit schools have addressed old challenges with new strategies. Higher-education leaders--especially those who are responding to enrollment declines by serving the booming adult market--are recognizing and acknowledging their debt to for-profit innovation.