Thanks to Valerie Strauss for reporting that the University of Phoenix is experiencing a huge enrollment decline and a consequent drop in its profitability and stock price. I am not at all sorry to see this, as I am not an aficionado of online “colleges” or for-profit education institutions.
She writes:
The University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit university in the United States, has lost a few hundred thousand students in the last five years, according to its parent company.
Apollo Education Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, announced Wednesday that revenues and enrollment had fallen in the last quarter about 14 percent compared to the same period in 2014. What’s more, the school’s enrollment five years ago was 460,000 students and now it is 213,000, CNN Money reported. The news on Wednesday sparked a 30 percent drop in Apollo’s stock. (Apollo stock was at $19.57 a share in Thursday morning trading, down 2.4 percent.)
The University of Phoenix, which started in 1976 in the Phoenix area, delivers education largely online but also has brick-and-mortar classrooms. In recent years it has been forced to close some of its classrooms and has faced competition from traditional universities that have started their own online courses.
Studies have shown that many of the for-profit institutions are predatory and concerned more with profit than with learning. Education should be profitable but intellectually and spiritually, not on the stock exchange.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Very good news.
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Over the last five years, I’ve had numerous opportunities to sit with candidates who have taken courses at the U of Phoenix. In every case, they were totally unprepared for the next step in their professional development. In most cases, they were trying to do the right thing by taking classes while raising a family at home. Little did they realize that they were getting the short end of the deal. As a professional, however, I had but little choice but to tell them they were unprepared. Imagine an airline pilot taking all of his training online. Or, my cardiologist. Or, my dentist. Or…
The U of Phoenix is good for one thing. They have a lovely football stadium that they rent out to professional teams and maybe others.
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The online programs that really scare me are the ones in Nursing, which are at a number of schools and are at all levels, from undergrad on up, including at Phoenix: http://www.phoenix.edu/colleges_divisions/nursing.html
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Serious question, what were they not prepared for? To enter the workforce? To occupy a certain job? They lacked certain “job skills” or they lacked basic knowledge and education?
The three examples you gave are all highly specialized “skills” imo. I could care less if my pilot knows world history. And I agree, I wouldn’t want a pilot that only studied online. But a pilot is more a skill vs a general education.
Aren’t you making the reformers argument for them? “Students” are human capital that need job skills?
So does the University of Phoenix turn out “uneducated” graduates or unemployable graduates?
Seems to me Harvard and Yale turn out some pretty bad politicians.
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Employers, those that I deal with, think online colleges like Phoenix are bullshit. Their degrees are cracker jack prizes. There is a difference, for instance, taking some online classes from a brick and mortar school, like Rutgers. What does amaze me in the reform world, however, is that TFAs get credentialed through bogus means, and get weekend masters degrees through relay, and their superintendents go to Broad Academy, and the reformers eat that up like it is biscuits and gravy, and turn their noses at legitimate, certified, credentialled teachers.
Strictly online “universities” have a stigma–that they are for lazy folks who can’t cut it in a real university.
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university of phoenix takes the least likely students to attend college, and runs a program where you can buy a degree. All it requires is a paragraph a week, and 1 page of writing a month to earn a phoenix degree…then you even have the students who don’t contribute their full page and let the other group members finish the 5 page paper…phoenix is a waste of time and money…
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“Over the last five years, more than $600 million in college assistance for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans has been spent on California schools so substandard that they have failed to qualify for state financial aid.
As a result, the GI Bill – designed to help veterans live the American dream – is supporting for-profit companies that spend lavishly on marketing but can leave veterans with worthless degrees and few job prospects, The Center for Investigative Reporting found.
“It’s not education; I think it’s just greed,” said David Pace, a 20-year Navy veteran who used the GI Bill to obtain a business degree from the University of Phoenix’s San Diego campus.’
http://cironline.org/reports/gi-bill-funds-flow-profit-colleges-fail-state-aid-standards-6477
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Dianne…..please call me on my cell when your time permits….Billy
Billy R. Reagan
(713) 795-9696
(832) 215-8877 cell
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I’m no fan of these colleges, but I another angle to consider is that community college enrollment often drops as the economy gets better. More people employed, less incentive to go to college when the economy is better.
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that’s true…you only see people going back to college in large numbers during an economic downturn…i talked with students that were making 6 figures and wanted to go back to school, I’m asking why? you are making six figures and the average pay for a graduate with your degree is 1/3rd of what you are making now…
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In time, word of mouth usually spreads about fraudsters—even more so in the age of social media. To combat that, The University of Phoenix must have a department of spin doctors to combat the truth about their predatory practices.
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I like that: Department of Spin Doctors 😊
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I think the decline of enrollment speaks volumes for the world of secondary education. Education is now becoming increasingly more available to the working class of people who otherwise could not participate in a college program if it weren’t for online courses. College is becoming less exclusive, which is something to think positively about.
However, I’d like to address your concern in regard to the profitability of education. Education is evolving into mass profit mechanism for large corporations. Whether it be due to standardized testing, online courses in college, curriculums, college prep books, test books; all of which are seemingly produced and encouraged in order to make a profit or to have direct influence in some aspect of education.
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“Education should be profitable but intellectually and spiritually, not on the stock exchange.”
Turning into a commie now on us are you Diane????
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Having attended an on-line credential program, I found that the time required was significantly higher than for on campus instruction. One had to present all work in written form, forcing one to analyze carefully what one thought. Classmates responded in clear arguments for their positions. Frankly, I have no idea how those who submitted the minimum were perceived by the instructors.
I did not consider these classes an education in the classic sense. They were training in specific skills for special educators and were taken by people who had Masters and Doctorates in a variety of academic areas.
As a culture, Americans lump several kinds of education together. We need to accept that or decide to create new terminology.
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training for what skills? having to complete your paper in apa format. how to cite references…using journal articles to support your argument, how is that a job skill?
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I once took a Phoenix course, maybe 10 years ago when I was considering going to nursing school. To damn it with faint praise, I’ll say it wasn’t the worse college class I’ve ever had. (That honor goes to a class where the professor lectured with his eyes closed the entire time.) Of course, the student helps make the class, and I took it seriously and learned what I needed, so… The thing that got me was the cost. Astronomical! I could not imagine trying to get a degree that way. Which leads me to my broader point: Why should online classes cost so much? The Phoenix class wasn’t appreciably more expensive than an online graduate class I took years later from a traditional, brick-and-mortar state university. I think all universities, profit and nonprofit, see online classes as a way to make a high profit. It’s unfortunate, because online delivery can be appropriate and useful. But high fees lock students out.
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the only cost they have is the server used to house the online course-room and the cost of the so-called instructor, but if you have 50-60 students paying 1500 dollars that equals 90k per class or even 120k for a graduate class and you’ve only had to pay for the electricity to run the server, and the 1200-1500 dollars for the facilitator…the cost should be less for an online course, not more…it’s a big ripoff the for profit college…and everyone should stay as far away from it as they can…
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