One group of stocks to own during a recession is the education space, and my favorite name is ITT Educational Services (NYSE: ESI).

With unemployment rising, workers having difficulty finding jobs turn to education as a way to improve prospects.

With the growth of the Internet, the educational space has changed over the years. Brick-and-mortar schools have fallen behind the online degree providers. With a cost-effective and flexible program, online schools have been experiencing solid growth during this recession.

Despite the recent rally, this has been the most difficult period for investors since the Great Depression, and many trying to time a bottom in this market have been burned.

And the reality is that we are still not out of the woods. So is it time to give up?

Not at all!

There are companies operating in this environment that are actually growing their business despite the recession. And these stocks should hold their own in this bear market, even if we retest the recent lows.

Financial winter is here and the temperature of the market seems to be dropping anew. Credit markets are frozen and the line for government handouts grows by the day. There is no easy fix to the morass.

That much is clear.

As such, we will have plenty of time to contemplate exactly where it is we want to go from here. Hopefully, we won't make the same mistakes twice, and, in that way, some good may come out of the carnage after all.

We all know how we got into this mess. Greed and debt led to asset value growth that was unsustainable. The piper is calling in a major way.

He'll have plenty of listeners, mainly those now unemployed. Job losses are growing by the minute with some speculating that unemployment rates will grow to 10% or more before this recession is finished.

Certainly, the craziness in the mortgage market with its Wall Street accomplice had much to do with our troubles today. But then again, so did weakness in our education system. Shortcomings there have as much to do with job losses to overseas competition as anything else.

The Wall Street Journal's "Heard on the Street" column(subscription required) presents a strong bearish case for the for-profit educational providers -- companies such as University of Phoenix operator Apollo Group (NASDAQ: APOL) and ITT Educational Services (NYSE: ESI).

Sallie Mae (NYSE: SLM), a major provider of student loans, has tightened up its lending practices, and that could make career education less affordable for a lot of students.

According to the Journal, "The problem is that the schools will likely struggle to sustain their growth rates because of the tight lending environment and the slower-growing economy. If students have a tougher time borrowing, they may need to pay more out of their own pockets. But if their job prospects are looking rocky, or if they are worried they could be laid off from existing jobs, they won't want to shell out the tuition themselves."

But there may be another element to this that could make the outlook even more bleak for these companies, many of which have a lackluster reputation due to run-ins with regulators and questions surrounding their reporting and the value of the services they provide. Students attending career colleges are also thought to be at greater risk for default.

But here's another rub: Massachusetts' Democratic Governor Deval Patrick has proposed making two-year colleges free for all students -- a move like that would be devastating to the for-profit colleges. If that comes to pass in Massachusetts, or if other states make similar, less radical efforts to lower the cost of two-year colleges, for-profit colleges could see enrollment plummet.

Investors in these stocks will want to keep a close high on the political climate.