Price-Fixer in Private Education?

The Wall St. Journal recently ran a defense of for-profit colleges in its opinion section. The article, by Donald E. Graham, included this claim:

There is a price-fixer in private education—it's called the U.S. government. Long-existing regulations all but eliminate price competition. We are willing to cut prices on some programs and keep them low for years in return for relief from regulations that mandate our tuitions.

What regulations is he referring to? He doesn't say!

I wonder if it has to do with strings attached to the federal student loan program. Most of the students at these schools take federal loans to pay a big chunk of their tuitions.

Hillsdale College famously does not accept federal aid for its students, in order to avoid the attendant federal regulatory intrusion.

Who pays the piper
call the tune,
as colleges learned
all too soon.