I think it's because there are a couple of problems with higher education.
One, it really doesn't have any rules or regulations outside of FERPA laws. Everything else is the wild, wild west in terms of how colleges treat students, so that leaves a lot of room for colleges to mistreat or take advantage of students until they're motivated enough to litigate, if that's even possible for all but the wealthiest of students.
Two, there's no standards of higher education. There are standards for primary education, but little checks on the quality of your education beyond that. Only other way to "check if the product is good" is to take personal time showing up to lectures but that's not really a feasible solution.
Three, all colleges are for profit companies. Public or Private, it doesn't matter, the only difference is the scale of greed. The real goal here should be to rip the money and profits out of the hands of executives and committee members. Personally, I'm in favor of eminent domaining all colleges.
Four, why is a national good (the education of it's citizens) being held by individual colleges? Seriously, the Department of Education has about two to three decades worth of work trying to catch up on all this BS.