It was the long, nighttime walk through the community college’s jammed parking lots in Modesto that prompted Connacher to transfer about a year ago from the campus, where she paid about $80 a class, to Apollo Group Inc.’s University of Phoenix, where the cost was more than $1,000. She took out $12,000 in loans to cover the expense.

“I didn’t want to go to school at night, but that was all that was open at Modesto,” said Connacher, now 20, who earns $11 an hour. “The classes were crowded and hard to get into, my teachers seemed overwhelmed, and that was the last straw.”

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