Private colleges in the US are certainly not “for-profit” schools. They are most often specifically designated by their charters as “not-for-profit.” Most prestigious private colleges and universities (like Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Smith, Barnard, Vassar, Oberlin, Kenyon, etc.) do indeed offer majors in education.

“For-profit” schools are usually distance education or trade schools like ITT Tech, University of Phoenix, and Devry. These technical schools are generally for students who wish to learn a vocational skill in a two-year period, and thus are unable to offer majors in education, as education is a four-year program that requires a classroom internship experience.

Public universities (also designated as “not-for-profit”) also regularly offer education majors, because these universities are state-funded, and are mandated by their charters to offer a way for residents of their state to achieve teaching certification. As a matter of fact, many public universities began as “normal schools,” or “teachers colleges.”

Most students who wish to teach at the primary or secondary level attend public universities because these schools are specifically tailored to assist state residents to meet teaching certification requirements IN THAT STATE.

Students who attend prestigious private colleges are from all over the nation, and therefore education majors in these colleges are not prepared specifically for teaching certification in their home states, but in the state in which the college is located.

Education majors are not operationally costly at all. And they are very popular in the US.

I hope this helps to answer your query.

The general attitude among most professionals is that the best and the brightest don’t waste their time teaching. Private colleges need to attract students who are willing to pay top dollar for an education as well as grants and contributions from business and industry since they get no public funding. Students who are willing to pay for a private education generally are looking for a job that will reflect their investment. There’s not a lot of room to advance in the teaching profession.

In addition, the goal of college is to prepare students to meet the needs and challenges of employment. Large private corporations often make endowments or provide grant money to universities in order to fund certain programs that will turn out graduates who are trained and capable of working in their particular field. They need scientists and engineers, not teachers, so they are going to fund those programs.

The bottom line is, why would anyone want to pay $200,000 for a degree from a private college when he/she will end up getting the same job, at the same salary, by attending a public college that costs 1/4 that?

I suppose it’s because teaching isn’t that well paid a career, and so if you spend lots of money to attend an expensive private college, you typically want to use that education to earn more money.