An extra kick to the ass for struggling Americans is that in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse, a number of the banks that laid the economy low benefited due to the boom in for-profit colleges, which many struggling citizens opted for in desperation, hoping to find a better way, to pay the rent, to save the house. These dreams have often been deferred, at best, with many students now carrying school-related debt among their other burdens.

One entrepreneur who’s grown rich in this higher-education bubble is Carl Barney, an Ayn Rand enthusiast who doesn’t believe, in principle, that the U.S. government should be handing out those student loans, though he somehow manages to cash the checks. In a smart New York Times article, Patricia Cohen profiles the Objectivist tycoon and the industry that made him. An excerpt:

As a teenager, he traveled to Australia, where he sold encyclopedias door to door and picked grapes (“I was good at it”). He toured India, and later ended up in California — dabbling briefly, he admits with some embarrassment, in Scientology — seeking meaning here and there while engaging in the great American tradition of self-improvement.

By the 1970s, he participated in another American tradition: making money in real estate. Then a minor business transaction came along that became a seminal moment. After legally terminating a lease, he offered some extra compensation for the inconvenience.

The leaseholder was offended and said, “I don’t want anything that isn’t earned or deserved,” Mr. Barney recalls. She was describing Rand’s “trader principle,” which holds that two people engaging in a trade shouldn’t take any more, or less, from each other than is deserved.

Mr. Barney was bewildered.

Her explanation? “You need to read Atlas Shrugged.“

He began teaching himself about Rand and objectivism. Attending her final public appearance in 1981 in New Orleans, he heard speaker after speaker declare, “She changed my life.”

It was testimony Mr. Barney would ultimately echo. “This is what Rand taught me — identify that values that are important to you and practice the virtues to achieve that,” he said. It infused him with “a central purpose.”

That led him to pursue a business in education. So when a friend told him about the existence of for-profit colleges, he was struck. “Wow,” he said he thought, “you could actually buy a college? That’s what I want to do.”•