I totally disagree with the conspiracy theory. I do not believe they took over the schools to shut them down. I believe you have a bunch of low level leaders that thought they had all of the answers and would not listen to anyone. Hawn initially deployed Josh Susser and Heidi Johnson - WOW. These two pompous asses could not spell school! Josh goes on to screw up marketing for the next year and fails miserably. Heidi was such an embarrassment, Hawn had to reign her in and hide her back in MInnesota. Then Hawn hires Mike and Troy - DOUBLE WOW! Anyone who spent 5 minutes with Troy knows I need to say no more. Hawn's next strategic move, give the keys to the kingdom to Kim Dean - TRIPLE WOW!!! I wonder how he came to that decision. I guess he looked at the facts, saw that she had F*(&ed up everything she had ever been in charge of and said....that's my girl. Talk about someone who would not listen and knew it all!. That led to her surrounding herself with Yes people and getting rid of those who would not bow to Queen Dean. To the poster's point, this is how we ended up with Burkhalter and Cochran doing jobs they are just not remotely qualified to do. However, they are not the only ones who are in positions that do not match their skill set. At the same time, I agree with the other poster...they are not to blame. They are like the rest of us hanging on for dear life and milking a paycheck. The problem with thinking there will be 15 profitable schools left is that people like Burkhalter and Cochran continue on a daily basis to make poor ignorant decisions because they do not know any better. There is only 1 person to blame and that is Dave Hawn. Today, Hawn has given the keys to the kingdom to a new Queen.... Queen Mary who immediately decides to fire every Campus President and put the schools in the hands of our academic deans. Keep in mind that she never took the time to meet these people and just promoted them. I hate to paint with a broad stroke, but have you met the deans. Most of them could not successfully pass a GED exam. Trust me when I tell you there will not be 15 profitable schools to sell when this is finished. Like Sanford Brown, and Brown Mackie, Everest is a teach out in the making, You can throw Wyopuke right in with Everest. Under 300 starts in a summer start across all campuses is a disaster - especially when they are essentially giving the education away for nothing. The only ones paying are the vets we ware ripping off and they do not really care because the only reason they are there is to rip of their housing and living stipend from the government.
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They bought us as a tax write-off. That way ECMC could keep growing bigger and bigger and gain more market share in the student loan industry without losing.
The change from Presidents to the Deans was done with pressure from the DOE because of the investigation into Zenith Education Group by the press. To meet non-profit status Zenith had to make changes to the management system it left in place from CCi. One thing they have not done to meet non-profit education is to install a separate Board of Directors made up of volunteer education professionals. It is unheard of to use the same highly paid board of directors from ECMC. Also, where is the president of Zenith Education Group that Hawn has been promising for over a year. I don't think anything could have been done to save this thing short of doing the exact same thing that the other schools are doing, meaning predatory recruiting and advertising. Other than the Veterans WyoTech is losing money on the regular students and still can't get enough enrollees. They're practically giving the education away with grants from the government and ECMC and people still aren't interested.
I don't agree. It is obvious to any educated person that the schools were set up for failure from the beginning when Zenith took over. Marketing was NEVER put into place.
As far as giving the schools to the Dean...wow!! Did Zenith think about making sure that the Dean was capable of running a college????? Our Dean is incompetent of running abound the block and was a failure when the President was still here. Our Dean NEVER follows through on anything let along having the backing of his instructors.... The instructors do not respect our Dean.
You are correct that the career education time has run its course. It's a shame that the good name of WyoTech has been destroyed beyond repair by CCi and Zenith together. I still believe that ECMC was blackmailed into taking over the schools by the DOE and were not really interested in being in the education business.
You can only agree all of that. Our dean has no ability to have a conversation , nor can he stay off his Facebook for 2 minutes. A professional at looking busy and doing nothing. He couldn't cover a class nor handle a situation. We call these yes men.
After twenty some years left four months ago. Instead of receiving imput from people who were doing their jobs every day..they took their advice from higher ups...the 200 million dollar mistake was initially not changing the name..We all assumed once bought..besides lowering tuition ..a name change was in order..You could've call them Zenith University.. No instead maintain the status quo..Way to ignore business 101..Way to go..Add in the fact the Private School Business..whether for profit or not has seen it's better days.