Dear Commons Community,
It was announced yesterday that two for-profit universities, Strayer Education Inc. and the Capella Education Company, would merge with Strayer becoming the corporate umbrella both universities will operate under. Each entity will retain its own governing board, president, and other administrative officers, as well as faculty and staff. An article in Business Wire reports on the details of the merger.
“This combination will allow us to accelerate investment in the educational experience we deliver to students at both universities,” said Karl McDonnell, chief executive of Strayer, “while achieving back-office efficiencies captured through the merger of our corporate functions.”
As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“The move is the latest in a string of changes that have fundamentally altered the terrain of for-profit higher education over the last several years.
In April, Purdue University announced that it had acquired the for-profit online-education behemoth Kaplan University. The purchase surprised many faculty members and students at the public university in Indiana.
The Apollo Education Group, the parent company of the University of Phoenix, was sold to a consortium of investors in 2016, making it a privately held company.
There was also the dramatic demise of ITT Educational Services Inc., which closed all of its campuses last year, after a series of investigations led the Department of Education to suspend its access to federal student-loan dollars.
In 2015, Corinthian Colleges Inc. announced it would cease operations at its remaining locations, and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And the Career Education Corporation, which enrolled more than 100,000 students in 2011, is now a shell of its former self and has sold several of its entities.
But the sequence of misfortune for the sector does not mean that it should be counted out. Several observers have noticed a friendlier climate for for-profit colleges under the Trump administration. In June, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced that the department would re-regulate the borrower defense-to-repayment and gainful-employment regulations, two Obama-era rules aimed primarily at policing the sector.”
These are interesting time for the for-profit higher education sector.
Tony
Well, i don’t think it is actually good for students. You know, merger of for-profit universities only shows us that they can’t do well alone. And as i think, it is quite big signal for students. Do you want to join university without knowing it will do well in future? I don’t think so. Sure, interesting times for the for-profit higher education sector are coming. But i don’t believe in its success. Anyway, i can be wrong. Time will show us.
Steve Maloy, senior writer at https://www.smartpaperhelp.com/