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Struggling University of Phoenix Lays Off 900
An anonymous reader writes: The struggles facing for-profit colleges continue. The University of Phoenix announced poor quarterly earnings yesterday, and the institution has laid off 900 workers since September. Enrollment is down 14% since last year, and the CEO of its parent company, Apollo Education Group, says enrollment is likely to drop from 206,000 to about 150,000 next year. Apollo's stock has lost more than half its value since the beginning of the year. "Tighter regulations on for-profits and the Obama administration's push to make community college free top the list of headwinds. And non-profit universities have entered the online education space, where for-profit schools once held center stage."
So Jane says no thanks to phoenix.
Low profit? Double the tuition! It is not like guaranteed student loans provided to student will turn it down.
This is how we got into this mess - guaranteed loans and inability to discard them in bankruptcy removed all competitive pressures on price.
>> Obama administration's push to make community college free top the list of headwinds
I lean conservative, but I call BS here. Obama's push was dead on arrival and largely forgotten.
>> And non-profit universities have entered the online education space, where for-profit schools once held center stage.
I'm not even sure I believe this. To save money and graduate faster, I picked up many of my 100's and 200's via "telecourses" I purchased through my local community college...and that was in the early 1990s.
One wonders whether it's the "for-profit" nature of the institution, or its "lack of government subsidy" that puts it at relative risk.
Phoenix and other for profit schools are nothing more than diploma mills. They need to die.
Couldn't they just go to Kinkos?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Just took a big hit.
I have tenure!
.
The struggles facing for-profit colleges continue. The University of Phoenix announced poor quarterly earnings yesterday
Cry me a river. These are companies that prey on people who are financially unsophisticated and often have no business being in college. (No disrespect intended but not everyone is college material or is ready for it even if they are) They push huge amounts of debt on people ill prepared to deal with it and provide a shoddy facsimile of an education. No employer is impressed by a degree from these degree factories because they know the "schools" are third rate at best.
These universities only exist to suck money from the department of education, and have nothing to do with actually educating or producing people with skills.
(traditional schools and their palatial grounds and constant build projects are an entirely different topi.)
I don't want to defame UoP, so I'll say that I've heard from a large number of sources that this institution has come to represent everything wrong with for-profit education, i.e. complete lack of quality in offerings leading to useless certifications, watered-down assessments so that "everyone passes," and shady applications and loan-mongering to skim the most revenue possible from unaware students.
Now that community and mainstream colleges are legitimately coming on board with better online offerings, it couldn't be that UoP is being squeezed out by the competition? ...or so I've heard.
It screams "Hey! I'm a moron!"
The problem in the US is the impression You go to School then you go to College with the college degree you can get a good job.
The marketing for the the For Profit takes advantage of this, and tries to make a Job focuses curriculum. But because employers are expecting a college degree, there is a bunch of other classes and stuff that is needed to take, which overall doesn't help out that much.
The traditional colleges, may have their marketing team say this will get you a good job, once you get into the school it is the impression "College is for learning, not job training"
The real solution is to give a better status of vocational training. So someone who wants a job in a particular field can get job training for that field. It isn't necessary for a Computer Science Degree to be a programmer. Also a Computer Science Degree shouldn't need to focus so much on programming, but more on the abstract concepts, that we normally wont get to until grad school.
College should be for learning. We should have a better quality and more positive few towards vocational schools for the Job training.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I didn't go to college to gain knowledge, I went to get educated.
Let's be honest. You (and I) went to get a diploma and you hoped to learn some hopefully useful stuff along the way. I actually work in the field my degrees are in and I use only a tiny fraction of what they taught. Did they teach me how to think? Debatable. How to work? Already had that before I got to college. Impart some knowledge? Some though not always what I really needed and frequently stuff that was pointless or trivial. Not saying it was a complete waste of time (it wasn't) but calling it "getting educated" versus "gaining knowledge" misses the mark.
No, I went to college to get a diploma so I could get considered for jobs. Fortunately I learned some neat stuff along the way but the cost/benefit for what I got beyond the diploma was WAY out of whack. Seven years of classes for me and over $100K in debt is pretty stiff given that the stuff you really are going to need when you get out you'll mostly learn on the job anyway. Take away the diploma and the doors that opens and it really would not have been worth it.
As a teacher so eloquently put it, anyone with internet access has access to more knowledge than they know what to do with.
I prefer the one I heard which was "Don't confuse your schooling with your education". I learned more from projects outside of class that I never got a single credit-hour for than from all my formal classes combined. I worked through college and I guarantee you I learned more from the jobs than from the classes.
It screams "Hey! I'm a moron!"
Or, Hey, I got my degree overseas while in the military in 90s.
Close... Money only spent on institutions that have union employees who have their union dues given to the DNC whether they want it or not.
You will also notice the $1Trillion spent on "shovel ready jobs" mostly went to other union workers in a DNC money laundering scheme.
The struggles facing for-profit colleges continue. The University of Phoenix announced poor quarterly earnings yesterday
Cry me a river. These are companies that prey on people who are financially unsophisticated and often have no business being in college. (No disrespect intended but not everyone is college material or is ready for it even if they are) They push huge amounts of debt on people ill prepared to deal with it and provide a shoddy facsimile of an education. No employer is impressed by a degree from these degree factories because they know the "schools" are third rate at best.
Way to paint the whole group with the same brush. That's ALWAYS the best path to the truth.
[Have a UoP degree] screams "Hey! I'm a moron!"
UoP degree holding candidates should simply be treated the same as self taught candidates. Up until recently there were no other options to get BS degrees online or at night school for the vast majority of majors, so students were forced to attend diploma mills like UoP or Devry. To get past HR filters schools like UoP were the only choice for many people.
I got my BS degree from UoP for these very reasons, but I followed it up with a MS degree from a real school. Even the MS degree wasn't that useful for someone self-taught and motivated (I could have taught all but 3 of my 13 classes), but I knew I wouldn't want UoP on my resume in the future because of employers that would just black ball me.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Well, I went to college because it was what people do.
But I think you're missing the main use of getting educated in a classroom vs. reading books or websites. That is, that you have someone to critique your work. That's largely what we pay professors and TAs for.
Also, grad school really did teach me how to think. (I studied linguistics.) My approach to examining arguments, criticizing them and learning from them grew immensely from that experience. Maybe I would have learned that anyway, but I'm not sure.
I presume the "for-profit" is actually related to their IRS status and not their overall financial goals.
For-Profit means that the organization has shareholders and any profits can be distributed without regard to the mission of the organization.
Most colleges are (IRS recognized) non-profits, though they pay high-6 and 7 figure salaries to top officers and have endowments in the billions.
Non profit doesn't mean they don't make a profit. It means they don't distribute their surplus revenues (basically profit) to shareholders but rather put those surplus revenues back into the organization's mission.
University of Phoenix once offered me a part time position teaching an online Statistics course. I have no background in Statistics and told them so. No problem, they said, as they'd give me the course materials.
They wanted to pay be $500 for a one term (semester?) course with 40 people in it. I don't remember what the students were paying, but I do remember that what they were offering me was only a teensy tiny part of it.
They also informed me that I could not fail anyone, nor could I give less than a B to more than 10% of the students, and no less than an A to 70% of the students.
I passed and now consider UOP degrees to be worth the paper they're printed on and not much else.
Exactly!
Not that many of the "not for profit" colleges aren't guilty too. But most of these for-profit colleges just don't provide much value to the students. Years ago, my ex-wife attended ITT Tech for a while, thinking she wanted to go into Electrical Engineering. The whole thing was a disaster. She wound up hugely in debt after only a couple of semesters, and eventually decided the program wasn't for her. Then, she realized the credits earned there were basically worthless, trying to transfer them elsewhere. So it was just thousands and thousands of dollars down the drain.
(I did get a nifty cardboard box full of various resistors, capacitors and transistors though.... I think she was required to pay for that as "school supplies" for one of the courses.)
And more recently, it's been my experience that the for-profit online universities are pathetic. Many of them use proprietary software which is clunky and not user-friendly at all to the students. There are a few standard packages out there that work pretty well for running an online university, but the for-profits tend not to want to invest in them, since they "saved money" using whatever junk they've held onto over the years.
For Not for profits do have to deal with being under a fine tooth comb and do not enjoy the same freedoms a for-profit will.
I've been on the board of directors of several 501C3 non-profits. I also am an accountant specializing in corporate finance. I assure you that in general the paperwork burden for most non-profits is less than or no worse than that for corporations. In my experience it's generally been much less especially if the non-profit is quite small. For a large non-profit it's generally comparable to a for-profit business of similar size.
However, the knowledge you gained from the Internet may or may not be correct though...
I think it is probably comparable to the accuracy level you'll get from a lot of teachers. I couldn't begin to enumerate the number of bogus "facts" I heard from teachers over the years.
To be fair, most employers are also third rate at best and will end up staffed with third-rate employees because first-grade ones require first-grade pay and job. It's the pathological refusal to admit mediocrity is okay that causes the whole student debt crisis, since companies dream of being the next Google without any intent to invest anything towards that. It also leads to a cynical workforce that ignores even sensible corporate policies due to having witnessed megalomania and utter disconnect from reality too often.
Work all too often resembles an absurd farce where everyone lies, everyone knows everyone lies, everyone knows that everyone knows that everyone lies, and so on (my personal pet peeve is "zero incidence culture", where no incident is acceptable, thus people wait until work is finished before going to see a doctor if they get hurt to avoid getting punished for costing management their safety bonuses, leading to more sick days and sometimes mortal danger). They go through the motions anyway, since it's a kind of ritual meant to give something that theoretically exists only as legal fiction a palpable presence. The problem is, that presence is all too often heavy and oppressive, a kind of vampire sucking life out of its victims to sustain its own.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Pretty much all colleges are a joke these days. I would never just assume anyone knows stuff because they have that piece of paper. Grade inflation is ridiculous, you cannot tell from GPA who actually knows the stuff vs who whined and complained to the professors in order to get the same A as the people who actually know it. College is necessary for some careers because you simply cannot get around medical degrees, law degrees, etc.... but a large number of people waste a lot of time and money on stuff they could teach themselves.
Way to paint the whole group with the same brush. That's ALWAYS the best path to the truth.
Point me at an example of a for-profit school that is not a good approximation of my description of them. Perhaps there is some for-profit college that is doing a spectacular job but I've certainly never heard of one.
I've actually lectured at several of them so I'm speaking from direct experience. I've also as an employer seen the quality of graduates they generally produce during the hiring process and let's just say I'm not impressed.
Many "students" of UoP are already graduates. They use it to get a second degree or MBA to change career. Both are generally worthless due to the nature of degrees by mail establishments. But not worthless to those lending tuition fees. Basically, what UoP exists for.
Exactly!
Not that many of the "not for profit" colleges aren't guilty too. But most of these for-profit colleges just don't provide much value to the students. Years ago, my ex-wife attended ITT Tech for a while, thinking she wanted to go into Electrical Engineering. The whole thing was a disaster. She wound up hugely in debt after only a couple of semesters, and eventually decided the program wasn't for her. Then, she realized the credits earned there were basically worthless, trying to transfer them elsewhere. So it was just thousands and thousands of dollars down the drain.
In their defense, they do now point out that "not all credits may transfer". To me this is just a red flag that no other school considers their classes as worth anything.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I know a place where they can get one.
College degrees definitely don;t mean what they used to, but there is no way I'm hiring a structural engineer with no degree (i.e. because degrees are a joke).
It'll take a generation to get online education up to snuff, getting the curricula, controls, and individualized instruction in place.
Fine. Let's assume that is true even though I don't really buy that argument. That still is no excuse for scamming a bunch of people into taking on crushing debt while providing no meaningful education nor a credible diploma from a respected institution. Hell, many of them aren't even accredited. Even if they haven't figured all the details out that is NO excuse for the fraud that these institutions are committing on thousands of people.
The big universities can't even claim to get you work with a degree so why would you slap down that kind of money for a degree from what most consider an over priced diploma mill?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
These private collages, such as university of phoenix, result in 90% of the student loan defaults while they service less than 10% of students. That staggering percentage is why the Government is going after these institutions. There are MANY private schools that aren't targeted because they don't have these problems.
Hallelujah about friggin time.
The University of Phoenix and others of it's ilk are the proverbial scum of academia, the quicker they cease to exist the better for us, our culture and our society.
According to recent reportin (google NPR) UoP, suckered returning GI's from Afghanistan and Iraq out of more than $1,000,000,000.00 in GI benfits yielding a graduation rate of 7.3%! and for those lucky enough to get a "degree" vast numbers had to find out out the hard way that the accreditation that these "degrees" afforded were basically worthless. Spamming millions via email with their scams, hosting events at military bases to "advise" future students of how wonderful their shit is, these parasitic fuckwads have set back the cause of higher education multiple generations. Who amongst us would even council the youth of today to pursue a higher education? Now before you think I am not being fair to the well intentioned souls who work for UoP let me state this: As long as the federal student loan system/GI benefits system are in bed with the major financial institutions, creating a system where the US government earns 9 figure sums per year, while indebting countless millions of people to the tune of $1,000,000,000,000.00 can we really be mad at those capitalist "entrepreneurs" who know how to take advantage of a system designed to fuck millions with permanent indenture while at the same enriching exactly those who least need enrichment in our society?
Fuck for profit "universities".(*note for-profit != private, other criteria is needed to weed out the parasitic scum from genuine institutions of higher learning )
Fuck the federal student loan program.
Fuck the congresscritters responsible for this shit.
Only if you're a loser. We had access to the University of Maryland everywhere I was stationed.
I know a place where they can get one.
The School of Hard Knocks?
A strong example of their downfall are the online courses offered via iTunesU. If you want to be an iOS developer, the fact that you can watch ALL the lectures and get ALL the assignments and then converse with others doing the same thing for help/tips/hints/issues for FREE is astonishing. You don't get Stanford credit but in the end you learn. That's where I got my start.
Actually, you probably won't spend nearly as much due to financial aid. Sticker price != actual price.
Private for-profit colleges are welcome to continue to operate in any way or form without getting government hand-outs in form of grants and guaranteed loans. The problem administration is addressing is that of outcomes, and it is equally applicable to any type of college. If the job prospects and earning potential of graduates falls below certain cutoff, then the program is no longer eligible for the taxpayer subsidies. It just happen that 99% of such programs are in for-profit institutions. Why? Because in order to maximize profits, these for profit institutions maximized enrollment and reduced the minimum level of academic accomplishments to gain a degree. This also reduced the value of such degree in the job market.
If CC is free, why son't we just put people through 16 years of school instead of 12? Wouldn't it make more sense to use the existing infrastructure? The college grads I've been meeting lately are not much more intelligent than the average high schooler.
Do you have sources? I'd like to read up on this.
http://mediatrackers.org/wisconsin/2011/06/01/did-80-of-federal-stimulus-funds-go-to-public-unions/
Is this unique to U of P, or are their competitors having the same problems?
Government loans include new requirements which for profit cannot meet. That's pretty much the only reason.
Meanwhile the not-for-profit ones continue to grow their endowments unchecked but that isn't considered "profit".
What's sad is that UOP really could have done it! If they offered actual counseling guidance, and curricula that didn't just suck, and made sure that their clients passed classes with rigor, they could have *easily* made a profitable college with good reviews and earned trust.
Instead, they violated that trust, and probably deserve to be shut down.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
One of the problems with the for-profit college market is that they prey on unsophisticated people. Corinthian Colleges was just forced to shut down by the Dept. of Education because their graduation and employment rates were so abysmal. Unfortunately, they know non-traditional students often see education as the only way out of a bad situation, and know exactly how to take advantage of that.
A lot of people say it's the fault of the student loan program, but the reality is that these institutions are simply selling an unsophisticated person a dream, and cashing their student loan checks that could have easily gone to a community college or state university for a better result. They also take advantage of former military people separating from service, since they earned partial payment of their education expenses by serving.
I have never seen anyone with a University of Phoenix degree who I would consider "college educated" simply because the programs they offer don't actually do that. There's plenty of Internet stories about what actually passes for coursework and former instructors talking about how they can't fail anyone and are forced to try to retain students so those loan checks keep coming in.
If I were a company I would rather hire you with a 100.000USD debt than somebody with a 10.000USD debt. The power I have over you is 10 times that of what I have over the other person.
That means I can presss much more extra hours out of you without any need to pay for a longer period,while the other person might easily say "Fuck this, I quit."
This will not work in each an every situation, but in general? Hell yeah!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I went to UOP for 1 year (at the UOP in Denver, CO) - at the time they were the only college I found that had "adult education" curriculum's. Once Regis University came out with their's I dropped UOP like a bad habit! They were a TOTAL waste of my time and $$$! They were forever losing the tuition checks sent to them and always asked me to have the bank re-send them. I took one computer science course where the instructor took the WHOLE class time to talk about his theory about what happened to the Dinosaurs. Seriously? Really? Then I took a project management course with them. The day Columbine happened when I went to class that night, the instructor came in dressed in black pants, black cowboy boots, black shirt and a leather black trench-coat. Everyone in the class was looking at each other like "doesn't this MF know what just happened today?"
Yeah I would AVOID UOP like the plague!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
lot's of schools are "not all credits may transfer". in some places it got so bad that laws where passed to say colleges must take Community Colleges credits.
and it's seems like a profit thing with BS like you must take our math class we are on quarters or semesters and you when to a school that was on quarters or semesters so not all credits will move move over. Your school is too trades based and you need to take a lot of filler / fluff class.
We need a ged for college or some thing so people can get a gen edu's at the high school / Community Colleges cost levels.
Too many sub-70 IQ Africans, Mexicans, and other assorted third world scum, corrupt Indians, lying Chinese, etc.etc.
So good luck with your 'diversity', American cretins...
I'm a software developer living in Phoenix. Many moons ago I interviewed in person, on site for a development position. A recruiter followed up asking about my salary requests. After providing, I never heard a peep back, not even a simple no thank you. Unprofessional in my opinion.
I know 2 veterans (One a grade school friend, the other he met in Iraq, serving with the 4th ID) who worked in the department that recruits (well, pressures) veterans to attend using their Vet benefits. They both left after short stints, they weren't willing to perform the job that was expected of them, use their veteran status to convince other vets to attend the over priced school, almost always with loans.
They can't. That's where their graduates are. It'd be awkward...
What's sad is that UOP really could have done it! If they offered actual counseling guidance, and curricula that didn't just suck, and made sure that their clients passed classes with rigor, they could have *easily* made a profitable college with good reviews and earned trust.
But....but....that would mean less profit!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
A significant driver of college attendance was the courts making IQ tests illegal for employment. A diploma is in many cases nothing more than a surrogate for an IQ test.
Financial aid of $XXXX means the cost of that program just went up $XXXX for everyone. Same as the mortgage and housing industry. A house is not worth what someone is willing to pay for it, it's worth what a bank is willing to lend someone to pay for it. Throw more money at the bidders and the price goes up for everyone, even the prudent who didn't want to take out a loan to do so, since he's now competing against more money.
Can we get the state colleges to stop operating with government hand-outs, too? Penn State has both the highest tuition, and the biggest budget, of any state school. They are a drain on Pennsylvania taxpayers.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
community college / hs needs a pure trades track as well as a mixed trades / more college like track think stuff like IT / programming (does not need the full CS) and the pure college track. Maybe even a law / med school track (just to cut time down they are in school so long that they should cut out 1 year of filler / fluff from there class load)
I say at the very least move the gen ed that are in to days college in the new system not all tracks need the full load load of to days gen ed's yes some is needed but that base level can be moved to HS / expanded HS / mixed HS / community college. With say expanded gen ed / pure college prep in it's own track.
Or the extreme plan make 2 years of community college part of today's HS so when you get out you have an AA / AS (old system) or something to be named fitting the new plan. Now after that you can go 2 more years to get that BA / BS (old system) or something to be named fitting the new plan.
or just start working with skills from electives classes / go to a trade / tech school maybe just 6mo - 1year with them freed from having to tech filler / fluff / gen ed's that they needed to tech as they are roped in to the old system.
itt vs devry are pulled down as they do a poor job with gen ed's and have to tech filler / fluff classes as part of the degree system.
The same kinds of checks, outcomes, are equally applied to both profit and non-profit institutions. If one kind shit the bed in the name of making profit off government handouts, while another kind still managed to deliver results, how that government fault? Or do you suggest taxpayer money should go out without any kind of checks and balances in place?
How do you propose Pennsylvania compete in the global market in 30 years when % of educated professionals drops through the floor? You do understand how labor markets work, don't you? Silicon Valley exists in California not because they are friendly to corporations or have low taxes out there.
A diploma from an Ivy League college is valuable. Some people will get the diploma and still screw up, but nothing's perfect.
It's hard to go hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt at a state school, since they don't typically charge that much. Also, a state institution diploma is worth having, although not as valuable as the Ivy League diploma.
A diploma from one of the for-profit universities is typically less valuable, and the institution will do its best to get as much money as possible.
The lesson here is that money should be spent where it gets better value.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You can spend hundreds of thousands at a state or Ivy League college getting a useless degree, have giant debts, end up on food stamps
You can, but it's highly unlikely you will.
See, we're offshoring as fast as we can and when we can't do that we bring in more H1-Bs. Hell, I'm starting to see them in non-technical fields like entry level business analysis.
The real solution is protectionism and an end to the H1-B visa program so you don't need a 4 year degree to do something that can be learned in an afternoon. As long as companies use that degree qualification as a quick and easy way to get H1-Bs for free you'll have kid's drowning themselves in debt out of desperation.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Thank you.
Excuse me, but that's a red herring. I didn't suggest getting rid of all state schools, or even Penn State. I'm tired of writing them blank checks.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.