Thread regarding DeVry Inc. layoffs

@IbCfBTo-2mgz, thanks for sharing. I'm sure others have thought about doing the same and removing the Devry's name from our resumes. What did you replace it with? How can you hide it when listing past employers? Thanks for any insight you can provide on this topic!

I'm not so sure that people with only 10+ years really understand the history of DeVry. Maybe try 30+ years.

First off... DeVry Institute of Technology was granted University status in the early 1990s. This is not a new development. The former institutes of the 70s and 80s were highly successful trade schools, and made no bones about it. They were the alternative to the traditional university, eschewing the heavy emphasis on humanities. On one campus, there were two (and only two) humanities teachers, one History, and one English, with 40+ core curriculum instructors. Students were entering the workforce trained in 1.5 to 3 years in only what they needed on the job, without taking psychology or movie-watching classes.

When they became universities, the curriculum started a slow change, with more humanities and less core. However, the courses and degrees offered were now more transferable, so students could go on to higher degrees. But, and this is a big but, no state support is provided to for-profit universities (at least in this area) so tuition began a slow rise (bloated layers of management didn't help) to levels much higher than an in-state college or university. Why pay more for a degree equal to the local university offering?

Lastly... I believe most (if not all) of the campuses have already been sold off. Most (if not all) space is now leased. That may be how profits were propped up for a while.

I agree with @IbCfBTo-2gpc. Once DeVry lost sight of its roots as a technical institute based on employee education reimbursements, it could not execute an effective transition to a university because the majority of management and faculty were mired in an applied technology mindset and did not have the knowledge needed to make the change. The course offerings were not revised or expanded to reflect the broad scope of what is required for a university. The company took the easy way out: pump up the student volume through federal student loans and apply super-aggressive and fraudulent recruiting to drive increased revenues. Rather than develop the internal structures and systems needed to improve the quality of its classes and make an effective transition to a university, the company simply focused on revenues and played "catch as catch can" with internal resources.

I think the company tried to make the transition to a university, but once it became apparent to executive managers that the staff could not handle the needed changes then they gave up and focused on increasing sales. I have been teaching for DeVry for 12 years and have watched the school go through a series of spasms as it attempted to become more than what it is capable of becoming.

There are several elements needed to save the company.

1. Fire 75-80% of the managers and bring in people qualified to handle the management of change.

2. Eliminate or reduce by 90% revenues from federal student loans.

3. Revise and update the course offerings to reflect the broad scope of a true university, OR go back to a technical institute.

4. Sell all of the campuses and use a shared classroom approach linked closely to employers.

5. Offer significant discounts for employers who send groups of employees through the programs.

I have worked for some truly great companies and some truly terrible companies, and in my opinion the management at DeVry is average to below average. The current managers do not have the skills nor the mindset needed to turn the company around. Barring any changes, Nero will continue to fiddle as Rome burns to the ground.

2.3 billion dollar company. I'd say they are fine. Businesses have peaks and valleys. They may have tried to grow too fast but that happens in a competitive market. They are no way on hard times.

I haven't been with DeVry for quite ten years, but pretty close. I was formerly loyal until I caught a glimpse behind the iron curtain of deceit that defines the company's operating philosophy. Even now, I care enough about the students to endure the inhospitable environment that Home Office has created for us all. I'm just trying to get them to graduate while they still can.

The question of where DeVry went wrong is a difficult one. I think the reason why it's difficult is because there isn't just one single reason for its collapse. I once believed that i could trace the destruction back to the mistake of switching from semesters to eight week sessions, and then follow the sequence of events forward through a linear progression of ever-worsening decisions until you reached 2016, a year in which the demolition began happening on a large scale via parallel acts of internal sabotage, apparently engineered to hasten the inevitable demise of DVU.

However, my colleagues who had been there for decades say that the first big mistake happened when DeVry became a university. They lost sight of their roots of being an employer-focused technology institute and began chasing federal funds for traditional college students. The decision to become a university was a great idea that was poorly executed, and directly gave rise to many of the legal and business problems that ensued.

My time at DeVry has seen several instances of seemingly great ideas that were poorly executed. Only lately has the trend become terrible ideas that are executed rapidly.

Nice try, Lisa.

DeVry followed the same path as the University of Phoenix. This book describes what happened at UOP - just substutute the word "DeVry" for UOP" throughout the text and you have a fairly accurate picture of what happened to DeVry.

https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Forsaken-University-Phoenix-Affair/dp/096696831X.

DeVry as it stands cannot be reformed unless it goes back to employer-sponsored education only. The industry structure will have to change, including banning students at for-profit schools from obtaining federal student loans. Some excellent solutions are described in the books that I list here.

For a very clear historical perspective of for-profit schools I recommend the following book: "Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream ."

https://www.amazon.com/Diploma-Mills-Profit-Colleges-Taxpayers/dp/1421420074

I took DeVry off my resume three years ago when it became apparent that the school was engaged in massive fraud. I will not admit to having worked for the company.

@IbCfBTo-1nxu all loyalty will do is.....nothing. Many have been loyal only to find themselves laid off. Make sure the company you want to be so loyal to is actually worthy of your loyalty. In this case it might be misplaced.

Camden just go away. No one loyal to devry is going to contact you.

Where did they go wrong? They left their roots of training people for careers in electrical engineering and tech type stuff, got greedy with title 4 and started the selling "college" scam. It was horrible watching admissions people cold call anything that clicked on a link and hard sell a worthless degree to someone that barely graduated high school. Add government guaranteed loans, and you've created a friggin monster. Lots of layoffs happening, because they finally cut the head off.