“I was promised the world and was given a garbage dump to clean up,” she wrote in an online complaint at consumeraffairs.com. “Like my life was not already screwed up with welfare and all.”

The student loan crisis has spread from for-profit colleges to more traditional institutions, but the for-profit colleges continue to represent the worst of the problem. Students complain that they were misled about the costs of education and that their job prospects were exaggerated. Government reports and lawsuits have accused some for-profit colleges of outright fraud, including doctoring attendance records or peddling near-worthless degrees.

The result? Students at for-profit colleges are twice as likely as other students to default on their student loans. Moreover, among students seeking a bachelor’s degree, only 22 percent succeed within six years, compared with 65 percent at nonprofit private schools and 55 percent at public institutions. (For-profit students, however, tend to do better at obtaining associate degrees and certificates.)

Leaders of the for-profit industry defended themselves, saying they were providing higher education for lower-class students that traditional colleges had left behind. “The reality is the type of students we attract have no other opportunity,” said Steven Gunderson, head of a leading trade organization. “We are the ones that provide a path to the middle class.”

Still, the outcomes for many students have been so poor — and the reported abuses and misdeeds by the colleges so abundant — that the for-profit colleges have played another role in the worsening debt problem: drawing attention away from nonprofit private and public colleges and universities, which have been slow to face public scrutiny.

The situation has parallels to the mortgage crisis of a few years ago, said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. The for-profit colleges are like the subprime lenders — attracting the limelight because they represent the worst of the problem, he said.

“Mainstream higher ed can really self-righteously look at the big problem out there and say, ‘The problem lies with the other guy,’ ” Mr. Nassirian said. “If you are looking at highway robbery and raping and pillaging, that is true. But there are all kinds of unfortunate practices in traditional higher education that are equally as problematic that are reaching the crisis point.” Last year, Congress approved regulations to curb abuses in the for-profit sector, but there has been less focus on establishing broader rules for traditional colleges and universities.