Brian Stoffel from the Motley Fool recently wrote an article indicating he may have been totally wrong in his opinions relating to the for profit education industry.

I spent the better part of my first year at the Fool raging against the for-profit education community. And it was for good reason: Enrollment is dropping, they get too much money from the government, and students are defaulting on their loans at alarming rates.

But after watching a recent speech by innovation guru Clayton Christensen, I’m starting to wonder if I am reading the situation completely wrong.

1. Competing against non-consumption
Christensen says that most innovation comes from companies that are able to bring products to people that otherwise would have no access to them…

2. Using different metrics
A typical college or university focuses on the quality of the research being conducted by faculty as a preeminent metric for value and worth that a college has. While that might seem great, it doesn’t do much to ensure that students are actually being taught…

3. New customers will be enticed into the system
With the cost of sending a child to college sky-rocketing, more and more students may look at online schools as a viable alternative…

Link to complete article

ForProfitEDU would like to extend an exclusive invitation to you to attend The Capital Roundtable’s conference on Private Equity Investing in For-Profit Education Companies, being held on Thursday, January 12 in New York City.

As a partner, we have the privilege to put your name on our VIP list, allowing you to register for a special rate of $995 — $400 off the standard registration price.

This day-long conference is being chaired by Chris Hoehn-Saric, Senior Managing Director at Sterling Partners, and features 20 experts.

For registration or inquiries, just call Anna Fagan at 212-832-7300 ext. 0, or email her at afagan@capitalroundtable.com. Please be sure to mention our name”ForProfitEDU.com”.

For more details, click link below:
http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/Capital-Roundtable-For-Profit-Education-Private-Equity-Conference-2012.html

I hope to see you on January 12 for what promises to be a great day.

Have a Wonderful Holiday!

P.S. Since we expect this conference to attract a strong attendance, please register as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

November 29, 2011

CareerMotivations today announces it’s free assessment service for students and career changers.   We provide a best in class validated assessment that helps prospective students determine career paths & college degrees which best fit their personal interests & motivations.  Combining a proven, reliable, fully validated assessment with the US Govt’s O’net, BLS & CIP code data allows us to provide an in-depth snapshot into one’s personal interests & motivations aligned with Career Path’s and associated College Degree programs.   Most agree that those who make well informed educational decisions are more likely to be students with higher retention, graduation & placement rates.
It’s about outcomes, we strive to ensure a Win – Win relationship between the student and the college.  Often students do not understand their motivations and therefore enroll in a path that leads to a lack of interest & boredom; when that occurs, the commitment vanishes and ultimately they drop out.  Since colleges are looking to improve outcomes and students are looking for guidance as to what’s right for them, CareerMotivations assessment provides that.
For Students: If you are a student or a working professional who is pursuing or advancing a degree, CareerMotivation’s online assessment can help you choose a specific degree that will lead you to your desired career path based on your personal motivations and interests. Selecting the right career path along with the associated degree program is an important step in reaching your future career planning, goals & success. Your personal career assessment will reveal your skills, interests, learning styles and motivation. The results are mapped to career & degree information which can be used as your guide for career development.
Solutions for Colleges: Colleges can offer the assessment to their prospective students  allowing both the student and the admissions reps to make a more informed decision.  We can map your college’s specific degree programs to the results allowing both admissions & prospective students to see which of your schools programs they are best suited for.  When you reach out to prospective students you can establish a value proposition and a trusted relationship with them & their families. The assessment when offered by your school will reinforce the importance of the decision they are looking to make and show them that you have their best interest in mind. What better way to establish a relationship of trust than by offering them a Free Career Assessment- one that helps them identify which career & educational path’s are available at your college is right for them. Advertising a Free Career Motivations assessment can also help attract new students, yield significant return with your recirc’s and reduce acquisition costs of students. Think of the relationship you establish with the prospective student and family when your admissions representative sits down with them to go over their results and helps them plan for their future and achieve their goals & desires.

Solutions for Call Center & Lead providers:

Lead providers can utilize a private labeled or co-branded version of the CareerMotivations assessment to increase lead generation volume and reduce the cost of prospect acquisition.  The registration can be customized to collect the data fields you require prior to users being able to take the assessment.  The registrations can be posted directly to your lead management system or dialer.  CareerMotivations believes the value of a lead who has taken an assessment is significantly higher than a lead alone.

About

CareerMotivations is an educational services company that specializes in providing interactive assessment solutions to secondary, post-secondary institutions and individuals. By capitalizing on proven techniques to determine a person’s educational and career motivations, we help identify mutually beneficial relationships between a student and their desired education and career path.

For more information on CareerMotivations services please visit www.careermotivations.com

Press Contact:

http://www.careermotivations.com/students/contact-us/

or email us at info (@) ffventures.com

Address:
14 Vervalen Street
Closter, New Jersey 07624

Phone: 201-564-7651
Fax: 201-215-0751

Shares of Career Education Corp plunged 42 percent to their lowest in more than 10 years on Wednesday, a day after its chief executive resigned amid findings of improper placement practices, and increased accreditation risks.

The company also reported disappointing quarterly results 10 days ahead of schedule and said the decline in new student sign-ups will not improve in the near term.

At least two brokerages downgraded the stock to their lowest rating citing too many near-term risks.

FORCED EXIT?

Though the company did not tie the placement discrepancies to McCullough’s departure, analysts say he was kicked out for that very issue.

“The compliance issues were probably the main driver behind the CEO resignation,” analyst Dobell said. “An issue with compliance and honesty, particularly given McCullough’s background, was probably more than the board was willing to tolerate and more than McCullough was willing to stand for.”

McCullough was well respected and credited for cleaning up Career Education’s reputation and streamlining its operations, according to Robert W Baird analyst Amy Junker.

Interesting article from University Ventures Fund:

If you’ve seen Moneyball, the new baseball film about the unlikely success of the Oakland A’s and their out-of-the-box-thinking General Manager Billy Beane, you may have already drawn parallels to the current state of higher education. If not, we’re pleased to do it for you!

Like baseball ten years ago, higher education is focused on what’s easy to measure. For baseball it may have been body parts, batting average and the number on the radar gun. For higher education, it’s the 3Rs: research, rankings and real estate. Each of these areas is easily quantified or judged: research citations or number of publications in Nature and Science; U.S. News ranking (or colleges choose from a plethora of new entrants to the ranking game, including the international ranking by Shanghai Jiao Tong University); and in terms of real estate, how much has been spent on a new building and how stately, innovative and generally impressive it appears.

Unfortunately, the 3Rs correlate about as closely to student learning and student outcomes as batting average or fastball velocity, which is to say, not at all. Buildings are the “ugly girlfriend” of higher education.

Universities that continue to focus on the 3Rs in the wake of the seismic shifts currently roiling higher education (state budget cuts, increased sticker shock, technology-based learning) are either not serious about improving student learning and student outcomes, or they’re like the baseball fan who has lost her car keys in the stadium parking lot at night: Where does she look for them? Not where she lost them, but under the light because that’s where she can see.

To read the entire article: http://universityventuresfund.com/publications.php?title=moneycollege-where-is-the-billy-beane-of-higher-education

After many discussions with some of the top aggregators & lead providers it became clear that most noted a lack in demand by the major schools.  This softness in demand seems to be continuing from the first 8 months of the year by the major EDU players. Not all lead providers indicating lack of demand, a select few of the highest quality providers tell us that the demand for their leads (even at the higher prices) continues to be strong.

Vendors have noted schools being slow to test new campaigns, delays in providing campaign approvals, and restrictions pertaining to taking on new partners/affiliates.

For most schools the demand for leads softened last year and has continued thus far this year.  Many site internal changes, program changes, more emphasis on direct acquisition, branding compliance fears as well as internal admissions process changes.

Education Sector has created such a measure, the “borrowing to credential ratio.”For each college, we have taken newly available U.S. Department of Education data showing the total amount of money borrowed by undergraduates and divided that sum by the total number of degrees awarded.

The results are revealing:

• Nationwide, the overall borrowing to credential ratio has risen sharply in recent years.

• Certain segments of the higher education industry—in particular, for-profitcolleges—are racking up far more student debt per degree than others.

• State policies matter a great deal, with seemingly similar public university systems achieving widely varying results for students.

• Among elite colleges and universities, some are making good on their pledgeto help low- and middle-income students graduate without major financialburdens while others are riding a wave of student debt to fame and fortune.

Keep in mind that this formula does not take into account the enrollment growth and thus lack of time for those new students to graduate, thus in many of the for profits case their number are artificially high as if they added 5000-35000 new students their numbers are significantly elevated due to their newness and do not reflect actuals.  This is a decent indicator for those schools with consistent flat enrollments

but not for those with rapidly changing enrollments.  Thus, those schools with declining enrollments may show better that actual results while those with enrollment growth will show higher inaccurate debt amounts.

 click here to viewreport: http://www.educationsector.org/sites/default/files/publications/Debt%20to%20Degree%20CYCT_RELEASE.pdf

With all that’s going on with regards to compliance and schools taking more and more time to be selective in who they work with, will aggregators eventually give in to transparency?  This topic is one of many heated discussions.  I have been to multiple edu marketing  panels with the who’s who of the major edu aggregators and it seems to be split.  Some of them say that if forced to they will come around and identify all of their sources, others however refuse to and say they will never disclose every source for their leads.  They believe their lead quality speaks for itself and don’t believe transparency is necessary.   Well these firmare very protective of their sources and they do not want to be open for cannibalization, but if there is some type of vendor protection why can’t there be complete transparency.  Some believe its because of the use of call center generated leads which continue to be tossed into the pile of Internet generated leads for many of the lead providers both at the top and bottom of the food chain.  I think schools have the right to know where the leads are comming from PROVIDED they protect the lead sources from their vendors, non-circumvention, non-disclosure etc should help provide this protection.  Many of the most astute schools will agree to this in order to get the transparency they want.  What do you think?

ForProfitEDU would like to extend an exclusive invitation to you to attend The Capital Roundtable’s conference on Private Equity Investing in Education Companies, being held on Thursday, July 21 in New York City.

As a partner, we have the privilege to put your name on our VIP list, allowing you to register for a special rate of $995 — $400 off the standard registration price.

This day-long conference is being chaired by Daniel Black, Managing Partner at Wicks Group of Companies, and features 20 experts.

For registration or inquiries, just call Shaina Mardinly at 212-832-7333 ext. 0, or email her at smardinly@capitalroundtable.com.  Please be sure to mention our name.

For more details, click here:

http://www.capitalroundtablemail.com/masterclass/Capital-Roundtable-Private-Equity-Education-Conference-2011.html?&tag=forprofitedu
I hope to see you on July 21 for what promises to be a great day.

P.S. Since we expect this conference to attract a strong attendance, please register as soon as possible to reserve your seat.

Yesterday the Obama Administration released final regulations requiring career college programs to better prepare students for “gainful employment” or risk losing access to Federal student aid.  Or at least thats how they put it…  Bottom line is that they eased a few caveats of the previous reg’s providing colleges with extended time for implementation, some flexibility on income data sources, interest only or income based payments, and minor changes to debt to income metric.

While this is at least a bit more manageable than the previous reg’s most believe it’s still harmful to many constituents in the lower income and minority segments.  Hopefully this will be a sign and more thought will go into future revisions.

link to the rules on ed.gov: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/gainful-employment-regulations