Mr Eisman had no grounding in the bond markets he wanted to short.

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The recent GAO report offers anecdotal support for Mr Eisman's view that much of the recruitment of students is predatory.

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In 2010, another hedge fund honcho, Steve Eisman, recommended that investors bet on a decline in stocks in the for-profit education industry.

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Proposed Education Dept. reforms would require them to limit borrowing to 8% of post-graduation income, Eisman said, severely trimming their growth rates and earnings.

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"The pendulum has swung too far against antiquities dealers and collectors, " says William Pearlstein, an attorney at Golenbock Eisman, who is representing dealers and collectors.

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Steve Eisman, a hedge-fund manager with a love of comics and a talent for offending people, had witnessed the subprime market blow up in the 1990s and was convinced the same would happen again.

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Chief cheerleader in this self-serving effort has been Steve Eisman, a prominent short seller who contends that for-profit colleges, much like subprime lenders, sucker the poor and uneducated into borrowing more money than they could ever pay back.

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Steven Eisman of Frontpoint Capital delivered a scathing brief against for-profit education companies Corinthian Colleges, Apollo Group, ESI and Washington Post, saying they were creating the next subprime crisis by inducing students to borrow billions of dollars in federally guaranteed debt.

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