It's not just the climbing walls and the salaries for star professors driving up the cost of college. In some cases, costs go up because the culture and management of traditional institutions are simply not structured to promote efficiency and savings. At for-profit colleges, it's a different story. There, the "incentives to save money are centralized." As a result, several for-profit colleges employ strategies rarely used by traditional institutions--such as paying instructors by the student rather than the class--that help them make money. In this era of tight budgets and growing national scrutiny of rising college costs, might some of the same bottom-line practices work as cost-cutting approaches for nonprofit colleges? This article looks at three strategies that help for-profit colleges succeed financially and in some cases pedagogically--strategies that might reduce costs in traditional higher education.