Dear Zenith Employee:
Zenith has been in operation for nearly three months, and together we’ve begun the demanding work of transforming our schools into a nonprofit model focused on student success. We’ve made remarkable progress on two of our main goals – making our programs more affordable and improving student outcomes. ECMC Group (Zenith’s parent company) has helped fund tuition reductions, grants for students in financial need and graduation scholarships for current students. To help improve job placement rates for our graduates, we’ve implemented Student Choice and instituted enrollment caps in certain programs.
As these initiatives indicate, we are focusing our resources on what matters most – students. And we need to do far more. We must shift a larger proportion of our resources to areas such as student assessment and remediation, academic program enrichment, new programs and career services. Making that shift requires a different operational and fiscal structure – one that is more campus-centered and staffed appropriately for the size of our student population.
Toward that end, today we are announcing a restructuring plan, developed by a joint team of Zenith and ECMC Group leaders. In our strategic discussions about the plan, there were no silos. We challenged each other’s thinking to come up with the best ideas and approaches, given the complex set of conditions we face and the positive future we want to create. This plan will help streamline the organization and make a greater share of our resources available for strengthening our student-facing activities.
Unfortunately, the restructuring will also require significant workforce reductions at every level. In total, about 1,000 employees will be laid off. While we are confident that our plan will lead to a bright future for Zenith – providing a quality educational experience and meaningful job prospects for thousands of students – current realities dictate that we must adjust our organizational structure and the size of our workforce to reflect the substantial decline in our student population.
Across our 53 ground schools today, we have about 15,000 students; online has an additional 9,000. Our current organization is designed to serve a much larger student population. Enrollment began trending down long before our acquisition of the schools, and has since been further reduced by Student Choice, enrollment caps, and a reassessment of how we market our educational services. We believe these and other initiatives will help make Zenith schools more attractive to prospective students and create a robust, growing organization in the long run.
The effective dates of the workforce reductions have been staggered to ensure continuity of service to students, but all of our colleagues directly affected by the reduction will be notified today. Whether the last date of employment is immediate or several months into the future, we are committed to aiding eligible employees with severance. Please join us in thanking our colleagues who will be leaving Zenith and wishing them well in the next chapters of their careers.
Although our restructuring plan calls for staffing reductions in many areas, we are increasing staff in others. In the area of regulatory compliance, for example, we are continuing to centralize the function at ECMC Group and will be expanding the team in Minnesota. We are also close to hiring a senior leader and team to help us create additional career opportunities for our graduates. This new leader will spearhead the formation of national and regional employer partnerships and provide functional expertise to help improve our overall job placement results.
Following is a description of the main actions we are taking; you will learn more about how these changes affect you at your individual work location. If you have additional questions or comments, please write to us at employeesuggestions@zenith.org.
Scaling Down and Consolidating Service Operations
As part of the restructure, we are scaling down the size of our service center operations and consolidating some services into the Tampa Service Center. This involves closing the Tempe, Arizona and Santa Ana, California centers. As we communicated earlier this week, we will no longer be providing transition serves for Everest College Phoenix (ECP) from the Tempe center, as Corinthian Colleges ran out of funds to operate and closed all of its schools, including ECP. Zenith had planned to purchase ECP, but several conditions required to complete the sale were not met. Any non-ECP services provided by Tempe will be either eliminated or consolidated into Tampa.
In addition, the Thornton, Colorado center will transition its student finance services to Tampa, and we will wind down and close the WyoTech national admissions operation in Thornton as well. As part of our plan to rejuvenate growth at our three WyoTech schools, we are in the process of creating a regional admissions team and will no longer need a national team.
The Tampa Service Center will continue to support our online programs; after the restructuring it will also be responsible for student finance processing and accounts receivable. As part of this change, student finance contact services and in-school payment collections will be transitioned to the campuses for a more student-friendly, face-to-face communications approach.
At a glance, here is what the Tampa Service Center will now host:
• For all students
• Student finance processing and accounts receivable
• Shared services (workforce management functions and call center systems administration)
• For online students
• Academic operations (faculty oversight, student success coaches, registrar services)
• Career services
Further Centralization of Compliance at ECMC Group
When Zenith was formed, ECMC Group made regulatory compliance one of its top priorities. Toward that end, many Zenith compliance functions were transitioned to ECMC Group, including placement verification, the student services hotline, policy administration and internal audit. Under the current restructuring plan, more centralization of compliance will occur, including all admissions and support center call monitoring and quality assurance, publications compliance, and as already noted, the staff will be expanded.
Scaling Down the Campus Support Center
To ensure the appropriate level of campus support for a smaller student population, Campus Support Center (CSC) functions will significantly reduce staffing and costs. ECMC Group will be absorbing some campus support responsibilities over time, some departments will be consolidated, and many vendor relationships will be renegotiated. The most substantial cuts occurred in finance, accounting, procurement, IT, marketing and human resources.
Restructuring Campus Staff and Management
Given our current student population, it is necessary to reduce staffing at our campuses. To ensure that our campuses can continue to support students and remain in compliance, we have made these reductions using carefully considered faculty-to-student and other staffing ratios developed by our Regional Vice Presidents and others.
We are reducing the number of Regional Vice Presidents (RVPs) from 9 to 7 and eliminating divisional positions. The campuses are the center of what we do and we are in the process of hiring a Provost to guide our campus strategy and establish our long-term organizational structure. As we take these steps, we are grateful that Michael Stiglich has agreed to help us during this transition as SVP of Campus Operations; all RVPs will report to him.
We are also continuing to evaluate our schools and programs to determine if any additional campuses or programs should be taught out.
Marketing – New Strategy, Improved Experience for Prospective Students
To create a marketing program that supports our new vision for the future, we have developed a new brand strategy that reflects our nonprofit, student-friendly values and that shifts more spending to the local level. We are seeing some early signs of success, as one-quarter of our schools (excluding teach-outs and Illinois schools) are now growing, and we expect most schools to be growing by early fall. With the closure of the Santa Ana center, we will be able to leverage the efficiency of Thornton Center. We are also changing our outbound dialing strategy to minimize redundant contacts and to reduce dialing at the campuses and contact centers. These changes will help create an improved experience for prospective students.
Looking Ahead
On a personal level, this is the sort of email no leader wants to have to send to his or her employees. Executing on this plan means saying good-bye to hundreds of our colleagues that have dedicated themselves to helping students succeed. While today we pause to say “thank you” to our departing colleagues, tomorrow we need to double down on ou