From an early age, 21-year-old Beatriz Arca knew she wanted to be a pharmacist. But after taking a few classes at a community college in California, her plans became muddled.

"I felt like I wasn't getting the classes I needed," says Ms. Arca. "It was getting frustrating, and it was hard to get a counselor's help to see what courses I should be taking. It was this big, complicated communication process."

So Ms. Arca left the college, unsure what to do next. Her parents, immigrants from Southeast Asia who never attended college, suggested DeVry University, in nearby Fremont, Calif., which they saw as a quicker ticket to a job. Even though the $16,500 price tag for a year's tuition meant she'd have to take out $49,500 in loans to complete a computer-technology degree, Ms. Arca decided it was worth it.

The college doesn't offer a pharmacology degree, but Ms. Arca says she chose to attend because a representative at DeVry sat down with her when she visited and clearly outlined the courses she would need for computer technology.

Ms. Arca says DeVry worked for her "because I just wanted to get my degree done with so I can move on to the next step. She plans to pursue a master's in pharmacology after she graduates in a few months, and she figures her degree in computers will help her in the job market and provide a good technology background for her future education plans.

As minority students make up a larger proportion of students seeking higher education, a burgeoning number of them are choosing for-profit colleges. At least half of the enrollment at DeVry, ITT Technical Institute, and Strayer University -- all of which have numerous campuses across the United States -- is minority students.

And proprietary colleges are among the top producers of minority college graduates in the country, according to an analysis of data from the National Center for Education Statistics conducted by Black Issues in Higher Education, which lists the top 100 institutions in number of degrees awarded to minority students. Individual campuses of Strayer and the University of Phoenix are ranked fourth and sixth, respectively, for granting bachelors' degrees in business to African-Americans. And Strayer and DeVry Institute of Technology are the top two institutions to confer bachelor's degrees in computer and information science to African-Americans. These three institutions also rank high in producing Hispanic graduates in these and other fields.

The success for-profit colleges have in attracting these students challenges the conventional wisdom on what it takes to achieve diversity in higher education. Although many colleges say that they must add ethnic studies or multicultural centers to appeal to minority students, most for-profit colleges have neither. And while many educators say minority students do not pursue higher education because of costs, for-profit colleges are attracting these students even though they often charge much more than public institutions and many private ones.

In the Washington metropolitan area, students pay nearly $9,000 per year to attend Strayer, while annual in-state tuition at the University of the District of Columbia is a mere $2,070.

So what explains the for-profit colleges' success? They have used a combination of aggressive marketing and convenience-centered student services to attract a more diverse student body than many traditional campuses.

Different Goals

Many higher-education experts praise these institutions for their effectiveness at providing practical training for a segment of the population that might not otherwise pursue postsecondary education.

"A lot of the job-placement data is pretty impressive," says David L. Kirp, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. "And you can just imagine how, if you're someone who hasn't spent a lot of time studying in the world of ideas, and your son or daughter can earn a bachelor's degree from an accredited school and start a career with a salary in the mid-40s, it's pretty tempting. I'd fork over the money."

But advocates for minority students in traditional higher education aren't willing to fully embrace for-profit colleges.

Antonio R. Flores, president of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, says he has mixed feelings about such institutions. His organization, which represents over 300 colleges and universities throughout the world whose enrollment is at least 25 percent Hispanic, doesn't allow for-profit institutions to join.

"These for-profits tend to zero in on skills and training necessary to get jobs, and not so much on developing their students as engaged citizens," says Mr. Flores. "And we believe that institutions that are only concerned with the private benefit of education to the individual are really dismissing half the value of education, which is for the individual to add to society as an informed citizen."

Knowing the Market

The narrow focus on professional training at many for-profit colleges is precisely what attracts many minority students, however. In fact, the ability of these colleges to market the "real world" applicability of the skills they teach resonates particularly well with minority students, say some higher-education experts, because so many of them are the first generation in their families to attend college. For such families, economic concerns take precedence over intellectual development.

"For poorer students, as many minority students tend to be, the economic payoff is the main motivator for going to college," says Thomas G. Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education. "They don't have the luxury, like many higher-income students, of thinking about the non-economic reasons for attending college, to pursue education for its own value."

Ms. Arca acknowledges that DeVry's practicality is what appealed to her. "The classes are a lot more focused because they all are about preparing me for one career," she says. At the community college she attended previously, "I had to take a lot of general-education classes, fulfill requirements -- I just didn't see the point."

As a college student in Canada, 21-year-old Gushy Joseph had a similar experience. Mr. Joseph is the son of Haitian immigrants. After attending a community college in Montreal, he enrolled in a four-year university there as a mathematics major, but quickly tired of his courses.

"I chose to major in math mainly because I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life," says Mr. Joseph. "But the program wasn't interesting, and I became interested in doing telecom work, so I left."

Mr. Joseph chose to move to Chicago and enroll in DeVry after seeing a television commercial advertising its telecommunications-management major. This time around, the more "specialized and technical" curriculum was "exactly what I was looking for," Mr. Joseph says.

Target Audiences

For-profit colleges also work hard to market their programs to prospective minority students.

In recognition of the growing population of Hispanic students and the need to serve them, ITT Technical Institute has run commercials in Spanish and translated many of its brochures and informational materials into Spanish as well. According to Rene R. Champagne, the chairman and chief executive officer of ITT Technical Institute, those materials were made with students' parents in mind.

"What we found in the majority of instances [with Hispanic students] is that the parents didn't have a good grasp of English," says Mr. Champagne. "As a result, they didn't understand much about the school and were confused. It made them more comfortable with supporting their students' decision when they knew more about the school."

Other institutions, including DeVry, also make sure their message is reaching their target audience by showing commercials on ethnic media outlets like the Black Entertainment Television.

And many for-profit institutions are more adept than traditional colleges at reaching out to students who lack financial savvy.

A 2003 study commissioned by Sallie Mae found that 66 percent of African-American parents and 62 percent of Hispanic parents feel they don't have enough information on how to pay for college. Consequently, many families incorrectly assume that they can't afford higher education, according to Joyce Smith, the executive director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

To combat those misconceptions, places like ITT Technical Institute have created additional positions for aid counselors at their campuses, and they keep their financial-aid offices open at night and on the weekends to accommodate working students who might need help filling out forms.

"Students' perception that they can't afford tuition is the single biggest impediment at the moment," says ITT's Mr. Champagne. "So one of the primary responsibilities of our financial-aid people is to show the average prospective student that they can afford it if they're willing to take out loans."

Location Is Key

Aside from techniques and services specifically aimed at minority and low-income students, campus locations also contribute to high minority enrollments at for-profit institutions. Many for-profit college campuses are situated in major metropolitan areas where large concentrations of minorities live.

"They tend to fish where the fish are," says Brian Pusser, an assistant professor of education at the University of Virginia who has studied the for-profit sector extensively.

While many young adults consider leaving home and living on a campus as part of the college experience, this expectation is not as prevalent in families in which the children are the first generation to attend college, as many minority students are. Aside from the added cost of going away to college, close family and cultural ties can also make a student less likely to want to trade family life for a dormitory.

"I think a lot of minorities are comfortable with the commuter environment," says Mr. Champagne. "If a family doesn't have English as their primary language, generally the family bonds are much stronger and there's the assumption that the student will live at home until their education is complete."

In Ms. Arca's situation, she doesn't feel like she's missing out on anything by living with her parents while completing her degree, even though many students at her high school went away to college.

"It never really appealed to me to live on a campus," says Ms. Arca. "I'm really close with my family, so I wanted to stay with them. It's partially a cultural thing that I live with my parents."

Josue Rivera, who lives in New York City and is working to complete his associate degree in computer-network operations at the Katharine Gibbs School, a proprietary technology-training college, also made the decision to stay close to home to be with his parents, who are Hispanic.

"It's the way I was brought up," Mr. Rivera says. "Family always comes first. You have to have your education and your priorities straight, but my parents wanted me to stay close by, and my mom needed my help."

Diverse Campuses

Some minority students at for-profit colleges say the diverse racial composition of their classes did not affect their decision to enroll or the quality of their learning experience. But then again, with these colleges attracting so many minority students, few of those attending them are thrust into an educational scenario where they suddenly feel conspicuous because of their minority status.

Ms. Arca's high school was fairly diverse, and she says that although most of her classmates at DeVry are Asian like herself, she does not think it would matter if they weren't. In North Carolina, 20-year-old William Bellamy, who attended ECPI Technical College, said he "didn't even take notice" of how many students were from minority groups, though he estimates that about half were African-American, like himself. Yet even though he liked his classes and the people at ECPI, he says he mainly stuck with his close group of friends from childhood who were all African-American.

Mr. Joseph, having attended a mostly white college, acknowledges that the diversity at DeVry's Chicago campus makes him feel more at ease, however.

"When you're around people like yourself, who have lived through the same experiences as you and are going through the same struggles as a minority, it definitely helps," says Mr. Joseph. "It just seems to make everything easier because you feel more comfortable and willing to ask other people in the class for help."

As many experts are quick to point out, the bulk of the tactics that for-profit colleges use to attract minority students can't be applied to the challenges nonprofit traditional colleges face when attempting to increase diversity.

According to Jamie P. Merisotis, the president of the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the differences between the educational objectives of a liberal-arts college and those of a for-profit institution make it impossible for them to appeal to the same group of people.

"The motivations that students have for attending for-profit colleges is often very different," says Mr. Merisotis. "The for-profits are focused on career training, so comparing them to four-year liberal-arts colleges is like apples and oranges."

Traditional colleges could learn a few things from the for-profit sector when it comes to communicating with students, however.

Mr. Flores, of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, says that the emphasis for-profit colleges place on informing students about different options for financing their education is one technique that nonprofit institutions could apply more often to attract minority students.

"I guess there is something to be said for the importance of for-profit colleges," says Mr. Flores. "There's a lot of things they do that nonprofits could do equally well or better."