A promise kept is a precious gift. And then it becomes a responsibility.

That transformation is happening this week at Grand Canyon University for 15 incoming freshmen.

They are at the school because 10 years ago a promise - the product of a tragedy - was made to them.

At the time, they were third-graders at Granada Elementary School in west Phoenix. Many were poor, and most of their families probably didn't even consider college an option.

When university officials brought them and their parents together to promise the students that they could go to the college for free, none of them really understood what it meant.

Capella Education Co., which offers online degrees through Capella University, on Thursday named Steven L. Polacek as its chief financial officer.

The appointment will be effective Sept. 7. Polacek will succeed Lois M. Martin, who announced his plans to leave the company in May.

Polacek, 50, previously served as chief financial officer at Hutchinson Technology Inc. Before that, he was chief administrative officer and chief financial officer at Opus Corp., a real estate development company.

BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK

Love 'em or hate 'em -- and many of this city's current power brokers seemingly fall into the latter category right now -- for-profit colleges are attracting students in ever-growing numbers, as made powerfully clear by an Education Department report released Wednesday.

The report, an annual study of college enrollments, prices and degrees awarded, includes data on the number of students who enrolled in various types of postsecondary institutions throughout the 2008-9 academic year. As seen in the linked table, the statistics show that for-profit colleges enrolled a total of 3.2 million students, 11.8 percent of the nearly 27.4 million students who studied at all institutions that year.

California's community-college system has canceled a controversial agreement that would have allowed students at some colleges to earn credit for discounted online courses at Kaplan University.

The 112-campus community-college system is severely overcrowded, and officials saw the November agreement as a way to make it easier for students to get classes they need. For Kaplan, the agreement promised a boost of credibility and a ready pool of new students, who would be able to take certain online courses at a 42-percent discount.

A large percentage of borrowers who left college in the past four years made no principal payments on their federally guaranteed student loans in 2009, according to the Department of Education.

This is the first time the department has calculated and published repayment rates for every college and university whose students get federal loans.

The data, released Aug. 13, should be a wake-up call to taxpayers, who will be on the hook if these loans are never repaid, and to students who wonder whether they'll earn enough to repay them.

Repayment rates vary widely from college to college. They can be found at http://links.sfgate.com/ZKES.

Responding to criticism following the release of institution-by-institution student loan repayment data, the U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday published answers to some "frequently asked questions" it has gotten since publishing the data on Aug. 13. Most of the document reiterates what the department has already said about the data and its approach to defining gainful employment, but there are some new tidbits:

Larry Isaak will be Capella University's next president, the school said Tuesday.

Interim President Mike Offerman will remain with Capella after Isaak, a former North Dakota State University system chancellor, takes over in November.

Isaak is currently president of thethe Midwestern Higher Education Compact in Minneapolis. He has a bachelor's degree in business administration and an MBA from the University of North Dakota.

Capella CEO Kevin Gilligan said Isaak is "a leader who truly appreciates and will be able to build upon Capella's reputation for academic quality and our focus on learner success.

College classrooms were once filled primarily by eager students straight out of high school. But the vast majority of today's college students work, have a family, are enrolled only part time, or a combination of all three.

This new breed of college student is reshaping the face of higher education in America.

Click through for audio and transcript.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

Law schools, once viewed as a guaranteed path to a high-paying career, are coming under fire as disillusioned graduates find a tighter job market than they say they were led to expect.

A small but growing coalition of graduates, on blogs with names like "Scammed Hard" and "Shilling Me Softly," blame their alma maters for luring them into expensive programs by overstating their employment prospects.

In July, Law School Transparency, a non-profit founded by two Vanderbilt law students, requested that 200 schools submit salary and employment data for 2010 grads, which they aim to post online.

The Obama administration's animosity for business profits threatens to deny educational opportunities for more than 300,000 poor, working or otherwise at-risk college students. Congress needs to step up to block a proposed new rule affecting for-profit colleges.

It's no secret that for-profit institutions such as Strayer University, the University of Phoenix and Kaplan University serve an unusually high percentage of students who lack the resources to repay student loans easily. It's also true that investigations have shown employees at some for-profit schools using misleading recruiting tactics to persuade some students to enroll. Somehow, the Obama administration has conflated the two problems.