Dive Summary:
- Facing increased competition from nonprofit and state schools and increased skepticism over the value of a high-cost education, for-profit colleges are losing students, with industry giant Apollo reporting a nearly 14% drop in enrollment last week and the news that it would close half of its brick-and-mortar locations to save on overhead.
- For-profit schools once boosted their enrollment with little regard for whether those students eventually earned a degree, and they're now finding stiff competition in courting the high-quality students they need in order to improve their image.
- With legislators seeing financial aid that goes to for-profits as an easy cut and more students turning to online programs offered by traditional universities, some analysts predict that pockets of the for-profit education industry will never recover, and that school closures and further losses are pretty much a guarantee.
From the article:
As consumers wise up about education spending, for-profit colleges are getting schooled. Institutions such as Apollo Group Inc.'s APOL -1.73% University of Phoenix, DeVry Inc. DV -3.07% and Washington Post Co.'s WPO -0.72% Kaplan—who only a few years ago reported double-digit student gains on a regular basis and posted hundreds of millions in profits—now are hemorrhaging students. ...