5 For-Profit Education Stocks With Upside

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The National Center for Education Statistics reports that American schools and colleges will likely welcome record number of students this fall as enrollment could be higher-than expected.

The fall 2011 snapshot survey findings show that enrollment for public elementary and secondary schools will be more than 49.4 million students. An additional 6 million students are expected to attend private schools. A record 19.7 million students are likely to attend American colleges and universities this fall, a positive enrollment growth of 4.4 million since fall 2000.

There are approximately 20.4 million students currently pursuing higher education in the U.S. and the British Council expects enrollment to increase by nearly 2 million by 2014.

Public elementary and secondary schools will spend about $525 billion for the 2011-12 academic year, with current expenditure per student averaging to $10,591. During the 2011-12 school year, colleges and universities are expected to award 833,000 associate's degrees, 1.7 million bachelor's degrees, 696,000 master's degrees, 102,300 first-professional degrees, and 74,700 doctoral degrees, as per data provided by the National Centre for Education Statistics.

Based on average estimates of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg, these five stocks have upsides ranging from 9% to 38%. Analysts' buy recommendation for these stocks is 64%, while hold rating is 34%.

The stocks are listed in ascending order of upside potential.

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