DeVry University will be closing more campuses after their parent company, Adtalem, dumped their brand and practically gave it away to Cogswell Education/Palm Ventures. They have already closed eight sites in 2018. Over the past few years, DeVry has closed 44 of their 90 learning sites.
http://collegemeltdown.blogspot.com/2018/07/subprime-college-crash-continues-under.html
Our region is also hiring Admissions reps like crazy. Admissions + Aduncts + Fewer Campuses = Variable Cost Model.
Who originally announced that we were going to variable costs, though?
Clearly the current cost structure is unstainable. That's why they are hiring our replacements now. We continue to hire VPs well beyond simple replacement for normal turnover. Remember, "we will transition to a variable cost model." We are here.
Will you get a severance package? You will get just enough to for it to be legally determined to be sufficient "Consideration" for you to sign the Release in the Severance package.
Or, they will make the environment so toxic, or raise the bar so high no one reach it, so you'll resign in lieu of a PIP, and they won't have to offer you a package. The problem is you'll be "terminated for cause" albeit a false one.
This isn't my first rodeo.
Very quickly. I would think their operating costs would be available somewhere. But, even assuming a scanty 100 full-time faculty with very low salaries ($50K/year) that's $5M right there. Then there are the extant on-site campuses, IT staff, and other support staff. So, I reckon, with absolutely the tightest ship possible, no more than 1 year of the status quo, unless more money to operate has been promised. If not, within months, a serious restructure will occur with on-site locations obliterated, and remaining students forced online--staffed primarily by adjuncts.
Cogswell has purchased a turnkey online infrastructure. Whatever middle managers remain, their DNA is only accustomed to executing zer orders from above--who will tell them what to do, and what will they tell them? End-course evaluations (ECE/MCE) became a threat and a justification for stalling careers or ending them. Shove 40 students into a class and expect that the course had better please them. Yes, PLEASE them. Make material "more achievable," when it's already been denuded of any intellectual or transcendent value--we're not here to ennoble anyone. "Work" with students ill-prepared to hand in any assignments, no matter how basic. Accept late work. Too many Fs--that's a problem. Too many students dropping--that's a problem. Do not expect or grade on a qualitative basis--you don't have time for that anyway. Plagiarism? It's an "educable moment" (after moment, after moment).
Middle managers complicit with top-level administration--the latter interested only in bottom-lines, the former only in saving their own asses--played favorites, manipulated IPPs, invented narratives of how 30-year teaching veterans could "improve," accentuated any student complaints, regardless of fairness, and minimized any accomplishments.
Faculty were beat up for any and all problems associated with the admission of an (un)remediable population of working adults with families, desperate to improve their circumstances, but lacking time, commitment to actual improvement, and basic skills necessary (reading comprehension, vocabulary) to achieve a college-level intellectual outcome or who were outright predators, riding the financial aid train until the rails end.
The evaluations of an online professor with 40 students in a "killer" course (which students hated, were not good at, and were among the most difficult in the curriculum) were compared with those of an on-site professor with fewer than 10 students in courses that students liked and were part of their majors. Ridiculous. What could be expected but that standards dropped, grades were inflated, and learning fell off the table?
And the few very good, very hard-working students who aspired to more than mere regurgitation of information, who had competencies and abilities to innovate meanings--these got swallowed in the Faustian nightmare.
How quickly can DeVry burn through $7M?
De minimis consideration, means one dollar was paid for DeVry. That’s what’s in the transfer agreement. I wonder if they are paying for it in cash. Yes, $7+ million in operating capital is coming with the purchase. But the purchase of the school—including the working capital asset—will be or already has been complete for one dollar. If someone sold me a dying school and seven million bucks for a dollar, I’d be pretty happy. Cogswell hasn’t said a word.
They paid Cogswell to take it...no "practically gave it away" about it.