Colleges need a source of revenue, both to pay for staff and materials, but also because some of them are privately-owned businesses which need to pay their shareholders.
Some schools do this through NCAA and having a dominant sports sexual assault and concussion program. Other schools have hefty real estate portfolios, including off-campus apartments, office parks, parking lots which are due to be redeveloped into something actually useful, and apparently prisons. Occasionally these sources of revenue will get so big that the college may be reasonably described as a sports team/real estate portfolio that incidentally provides an education.
Private prisons, of course, are just neoliberal free market innovation and privatization. Because nothing can be left as a non-profit public service, not even incarceration.
Put it all together and you have the horrors of Modern Capitalist America.
(Not true, not good taste, but it must be said - Hey, the medical school need to get their cadavers from somewhere!)