Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs

According to the Harvard Business School, "Guild Education is an education marketplace that connects employers and universities to provide employees with “education as a benefit.” Guild's employer clients include Walmart, Lowe's, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Taco Bell, Disney and Discover Financial. Its education partners include Penn Foster High School, eCornell (part of Cornell University), CSU Global, Purdue University Global (formerly Kaplan University), University of Denver University College, UF Online (part of University of Florida), Johnson and Wales University Online, Brandman University, Bellevue University, and Ancora Education. A majority of Guild's students are working class people of color. The company has been featured in Bloomberg, Forbes, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and Inside Higher Education.

History 

(2015) Guild Education founded by Rachel Romer Carlson and Brittany Stich, two Stanford graduates.
(2016) Guild Education raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. They also received an EQUIP grant from the US Department of Education "to provide low-income students with access to new models of education and training." 
(2017) Guild Education raised $20 million dollars in Series B funding. Guild Education teamed up with Lyft to offer programs to its drivers, making Lyft the "First Gig-Economy Company to Provide Access To Education Services to Contractors." Guild also worked with the Denver Public Schools system to help paraprofessionals, most of whom are people of color, become teachers. CEO Rachel Romer Carlson named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. 
(2018) Guild Education raised $40 million dollars in Series C funding. Felicis Ventures was a major investor. 
(2019) Guild Education valued at more than a billion dollars, a rare feat for a company founded by women. Guild Education raised $157 million in Series D funding. Investors included General Catalyst, Emerson Collective, Iconiq Capital and Lead Edge Capital. Ken Chenault joined Guild’s Board of Directors. NBA basketball star Stephen Curry also announced that he had invested in Guild Education.
(2020) Guild Education acquired edtech venture consultancy Entangled Group. CEO Rachel Romer Carlson was named a finalist for the EY Entrepreneur of the Year. 
(2021) Guild Education teamed up with online program manager 2U to connect employees with 500 bootcamp programs covering 30 disciplines and with Google to offer Google Career Certificates. It also added Ancora Corporate Training to its group of educational providers. 

Education Assistance Programs

Education assistance programs are used by many large businesses to recruit, retain, and retrain employees and to increase goodwill with former employees and the public. Corporations with these programs, include Walmart (Live Better U), Amazon (Career Choice), McDonald's (Archways to Opportunity) and Kroger (Feed Your Future). According to Wharton College professor Peter Cappelli, only a small percentage of workers actually use these benefits. 

Policy scholar Kelia Washington states that programs like those at Starbucks, Walmart, and Amazon "are limited in their ability to meaningfully increase college access and completion, and, at worst, they can create additional barriers for employees seeking to obtain high-quality, meaningful credentials." She added that "despite what may be advertised, corporate education assistance programs do not meaningfully relieve financial constraints facing employees interested in pursuing a college degree. These programs in fact limit the college and career choices for some of their employees."

Are Unicorns Real? 

Guild Education has gotten a lot of positive press as an innovative company doing good work. But what do we know about its operations? We know several of its high-profile clients (e.g. Walmart, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Taco Bell, The Walt Disney Company, Discover Financial Services, 5 Guys Inc) and educational providers (Penn Foster, University of Arizona Global Campus, Purdue University Global, University of Florida). The edtech startup is said to be valued at $1 Billion + (a unicorn), with annual revenues of $100 Million+. Paul Freedman has stated that Guild could become a $100 Billion company. But how about the real balance sheet? 

Bright Horizons is the company's largest competitor. Bright Horizons is publicly traded (BFAM) and has worked with more than 200 companies, including Home Depot and Goldman Sachs. Instride works with Arizona State University, Starbucks, and Uber. 

While University of Phoenix and EducationDynamics represent the old guard in for-profit education, Guild Education brings the "business model" of higher ed into the 2020s, connecting anti-union companies, low wage labor, and the new "lower ed," producing what appears to be little more than hype.

Leadership and Board Members

Rachel Romer Carlson is the CEO of Guild Education and the grand daughter of former Colorado Governor Roy Romer.  Her father Chris Romer is a lesser known politician who has worked in the oil and gas industry and charter schools.  Natalie McCollough is president and Chief Commercial Officer, Jessica Rusin is Chief Technology Officer, and Suzanne Stoller is the Chief People Officer.  Mae Podesta, VP of Finance and Strategy, is the daughter of DC power broker John Podesta. 

Guild's Board of Directors includes American business executive Kenneth Chenault, Google product innovator Wesley Chan, and Johnny C. Taylor Jr., President and CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). Lisa Sherman, President and CEO of the Ad Council is a board advisor. Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, is a senior strategist. Other board members include Annie Kadavy of Redpoint Ventures and Byron Deeter of Bessemer Venture Partners.  

Current Partners

Walmart's program is called Live Better U. Associates have the opportunity to earn a college degree "for just $1 a day." Partners include Penn Foster High School, Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue University Global, University of Florida, Bellevue University, and eCornell. Penn Foster provides online courses in facilities maintenance, industrial maintenance, HVAC/refrigeration, electrical, plumbing and construction. 

Disney's Aspire program partners include Purdue University Global, Southern New Hampshire University, University of Arizona online, University of Central Florida, Valencia College, Brandman University, University of Florida Online, University of Denver University College, Wilmington University and Bellevue University. In 2019, Disney reported "that they had invested $150 million in the Aspire free education program for 90,000 of the company’s cast members." 

Chipotle's program partners with Bellevue University. Wilmington University, Southern New Hampshire University, Brandman University, and Purdue University Global.

Lowes' program partners are Penn Foster High School, Brandman University, Colorado State University School of Business, Wilmington University, and Bellevue University.

Taco Bell's program partners with Brandman University, Johnson and Wales University online, Pathstream, University of Denver, and Wilmington University.

Discover Financial Services' program partners include University of Denver University College, Brandman University, Wilmington University, Bellevue University, and University of Florida Online.

Five Guys' program partners include Penn Foster High School, Brandman University, Southern New Hampshire University, Wilmington University, and Bellevue University.

Education Partners

Ancora Education is a for-profit educator focusing on vocational and technical programs.
Bellevue University is a private university based in Nebraska.
Brandman University is part of the Chapman University system.
eCornell is part of Cornell University, an elite private university.
Pathstream is a "web-based platform for teaching in-demand tech skills for work."
Penn Foster High School is a for-profit online high school owned by Bain Capital.
Purdue University Global, formerly known as Kaplan University, is a part of the Purdue University system.
Southern New Hampshire University is a large non-profit university.
University of Denver University College is a private university.
UF Online is part of the University of Florida state system.
Wilmington University is a private non-profit university based in Delaware.

Competitors

Bright Horizons is the company's largest competitor. Bright Horizons is publicly traded (BFAM) and has worked with more than 200 companies, including Home Depot and Goldman Sachs. Instride works with Arizona State University, Starbucks, and Uber.

Humans Don't (Really) Matter

According to the company, from 2015 to 2019, 400,000 working adults used Guild Education to explore their paths back to school. Guild states that there is a 208 percent return on investment for every one dollar spent on education and that the 90-day retention rate for employees enrolled in Guild is 98 percent versus a 71 percent baseline employee retention rate. In 2018, according to Guild, the Lumina Foundation "agreed to research and measure the impact and effectiveness of the program and will work with the Walmart team to share findings." In 2021, Guild also claims to have "helped working learners avoid more than $363 million in student debt." 

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "about 15,000 of 950,000 eligible employees use the $1-a-day tuition benefit." That's only about two percent of Walmart's workforce.  In a piece for EducationDive, CEO Rachel Romer Carlson said about 3 to 5 percent of workers in the Guild programs use the benefits.  

With their other clients, is Guild providing educational services to more than two percent of the eligible workers? And how many workers are completing programs?  From this analysis, and the intentional lack of data, it would appear Guild Education for the most part is acting as an anti-union shill, for corporate PR, gathering personal data, upskilling a few workers, and creating lots of goodwill for Walmart and others.  It's possibly a profitable strategy in a world of growing automation and widening inequality, where working people have little to do with the calculus. 

  

Guild (Education) No Longer Glitters: Layoffs, Toxic Work Environment, Questionable Acquisition

Here's our latest analysis of Guild (formerly Guild Education) based on a limited amount of publicly available data. Guild is a third-party provider of adult education, connecting big corporations like Walmart, JP Morgan, Tesla, and Disney with online schools like Purdue University Global (Purdue University's robocollege) and e-Cornell (Cornell's online school). 

For years, Guild Education received a substantial amount of positive press, which put them on our radar in 2021. We and others in the education world were wary of all the hype. Forbes was a big contributor to Guild's rise, along with its supporters: Silicon Valley Bank, ASU+GSV, Steph Curry, Oprah,  Johny C. Taylor Jr., Michael Horn, and Kenneth Chenault. And Guild had political ties with Mae Podesta, a daughter of Democratic Party powerbroker John Podesta.

In 2023, Guild was again on the radar as the edtech meltdown was occurring and investor money was drying up, especially in Silicon Valley.

Since Guild is a private, for-profit company, this limits our ability to fully assess the company, including its value. It appears Guild has not received a capital infusion since the summer of 2022, and there is no indication that it has ever been profitable. Valuations.fyi reports that Guild's value has dropped from a peak of $4.4B in 2022 to $1.3B in 2024.

The last two years Guild has suffered significant layoffs, and its charismatic CEO Rachel Romer, who suffered a stroke, was replaced by a less popular Bijal Shah (who only has a 37 percent favorability rating on Glassdoor). The edtech company has gone through major transitions, including a rebranding, while downsizing its core business. In early 2024, Guild announced that it was offering AI training. More recently, it has acquired Nomadic Learning, a platform for educating corporate leadership.

Glassdoor reviews have provided more information that are summarized here:

1. Toxic Work Environment/Hostile leadership: The behavior of senior leadership, particularly the CMO, is described as hostile, manipulative, and discriminatory. 

Lack of empathy: A lack of empathy from leadership towards employees is a recurring theme.

Discrimination: Instances of discrimination, both overt and subtle, are alleged, especially against women and employees of color.
 

2. Unfair Treatment and Inequity/Favoritism: Friends of leadership seem to be favored, regardless of merit or performance.

Unequal treatment: Women and employees of color appear to be disproportionately affected by negative actions, such as layoffs and discrimination.

Limited opportunities for advancement: The focus on "allies" in ERG spaces may limit opportunities for marginalized employees.
 

3. Erosion of Employee Benefits/Reduced holiday time: The removal of holiday time off and restrictions on PTO use have negatively impacted employees' ability to balance work and personal life.

Decreased support for employees: The company's focus on reducing costs has led to a decline in benefits and support for employees.
 

4. Misalignment with Mission/Prioritizing profits over people: The company's actions seem to prioritize financial gain over its stated mission of unlocking opportunity.

Disregard for employee needs: The company's failure to address the needs of its employees, particularly women and caregivers, contradicts its mission.
 

5. Loss of Talent/High turnover: The toxic work environment and declining benefits are likely contributing to a high turnover rate among talented employees.

Loss of marketing talent: The company's reputation is suffering due to the loss of its best marketing talent.

These issues raise serious concerns about Guild Education's culture, leadership, and commitment to its employees and mission. Addressing these problems will be crucial for the company's long-term success.

Why Acquire Nomadic Learning?

There could be several reasons why a company with a toxic work environment and declining employee morale would continue to acquire other businesses:

Diversification: Acquisitions can be seen as a way to diversify the company's revenue streams and reduce its reliance on a single product or service.

Market expansion: Acquiring other companies can help a company expand into new markets or geographic regions.

Synergies: The acquisition of complementary businesses can create synergies that lead to cost savings or increased revenue.

Talent acquisition: Acquisitions can be a way to acquire talented employees or intellectual property.

Short-term financial gains: Acquisitions can sometimes provide short-term financial gains, such as increased revenue or stock price appreciation.

However, it's important to note that these reasons may not be sufficient to justify the acquisition of other businesses if the company's internal problems are not addressed. A toxic work environment and declining employee morale can negatively impact a company's ability to retain talent, attract customers, and innovate.

It's possible that the company's leadership believes that acquisitions can help to mask or distract from the underlying problems. However, this is a short-term solution that is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run.

To truly improve its situation, Guild Education will need to address the root causes of its problems, including the toxic work environment, declining employee morale, and misalignment with its mission.

EdTech Meltdown

The Silicon Valley tech downturn has been creating reverberations in other parts of the economy and in other areas of the US.

Edtech, a small subset of the tech industry that overlaps with higher education, is facing major headwinds as skepticism about higher education and the economy grows.  Even two industry insiders, Noodle CEO John Katzman and Kaplan executive Brandon Busteed have been critical of the short-term thinking and questionable outcomes of edtech. Katzman has called some companies in the space "more adtech than edtech," implying that some do little more than marketing and advertising for colleges and universities.     

Ultimately, it's US consumers who are feeling the greatest pain as participants in online education--a mode of instruction that for millions of people may have more risks than benefits--within an increasingly dysfunctional economy that produces expensive education and fewer good jobs.   

Significant problems that were observed in large subprime colleges like University of Phoenix, Corinthian Colleges, ITT Tech, DeVry University, Colorado Tech, and the Art Institutes more than a dozen years ago have resurfaced in edtech.  And other problems unique to edtech have emerged. 

Chegg is an edtech company based in Santa Clara, California, and provides homework help, online tutoring, and other student services.  The company's value grew more than 300 percent in 2020, during the Covid pandemic, but has faced headwinds for the last two years. This includes allegations that  Chegg enables students to cheat on homework and other assignments. Derek Newton has chronicled this problem in the substack The Cheat Sheet.

 

[Chegg shares grew in 2020 during the Covid pandemic. Source: Seeking Alpha] 

 

Coursera is a publicly traded MOOC based in Mountain View California.  Shares started trading in April 2021.  The company has under-performed as a profit making enterprise. Massive Open Online Courses were once seen as a wave of the future in adult education but their popularity has waned. 

 

[Coursera has underperformed since its IPO in April 2021.  Source: Seeking Alpha]

2U (based in Lanham, MD) and Guild Education (based in Denver) and are two edtech companies based outside of Silicon Valley. 

2U is a publicly traded Online Program Manager (OPM).  The company services major universities such as the University of Southern California and University of North Carolina with support for some of their online degree programs. 2U has received an enormous amount of funding from Cathie Wood, a major Silicon Valley investor, and has continued to receive support despite a long record of financial losses.  

Some 2U investors have grown tired of persistent losses--and it has shown in the declining share price. The company also faces increased scrutiny in DC for recruiting consumers unable to recoup the cost of education for high-priced masters degrees in areas such as social work.  2U acquired edX, the Harvard-MIT MOOC in 2021 and its profitability remains to be seen.  

In 2023, 2U sued the US Department of Education for attempting to require more transparency between OPMs and their clients.  This strategy is similar to the defensive strategy that subprime colleges have used to stop gainful employment regulations, and more recently, borrower defense to repayment rules.  

 

 [2U shares have dropped more than 90 percent over the last 5 years. Source: Seeking Alpha]

Guild Education is a privately held corporation that grew to an estimated $4.4B evaluation in a few years. Guild serves businesses by administering online education benefits for large corporations such as Walmart, Target, and Macy's.  While its work may help companies with their bottom line, they appear to do little for their workers. 

At least ten of Guild's investors are based in Silicon Valley, including Silicon Valley Bank and venture capital firms in San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Menlo Park, California. Valuations.fyi reports Guild's estimated value at $1.3B, a 70 percent drop from its peak in June 2022. 

 

[Image above: Guild's valuation in Billions from valuations.fyi]

 

The Higher Education Inquirer will continue to observe changes in edtech as the College Meltdown advances.  

A ‘rigged’ economy and skepticism about college (Paul Fain, Open Campus)

How University of Phoenix Failed. It's a Long Story. But It's Important for the Future of Higher Education. 

The Cheat Sheet (Derek Newton)

2U Virus Expands College Meltdown to Elite Universities 

Erica Gallagher Speaks Out About 2U's Shady Practices at Department of Education Virtual Listening Meeting

Borrower Defense Claims Surpass 750,000. Consumers Empowered. Subprime Colleges and Programs Threatened.

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs 

College Meltdown 2.0 

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents"

The American Dream is Over (Gary Roth) 

Guild Education Board Member Johny C. Taylor Jr. Short-Listed for Secretary of Labor

Johny C. Taylor Jr, President of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), has been short-listed for the position of US Secretary of Labor. 

HEI is covering this story because Mr. Taylor is also a board member of Guild, an edtech company we have been covering since 2021. Moving forward, we are also interested in following any decisions he could make affecting labor in higher education. American labor itself is under attack as Amazon and SpaceX are challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board.

According to his bio at SHRM, Johny C. Taylor Jr. has held senior and chief executive roles at IAC/InteractiveCorp, Viacom's Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster Entertainment Group, the McGuireWoods law firm, and Compass Group USA. Most recently, Mr. Taylor was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund. He previously served on the White House American Workforce Policy Advisory Board and as chairman of the President's Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities during the Trump Administration.

An African American man whose salary at SHRM is greater than $1.3 million a year, Taylor has been a proponent of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the workplace. But as the chief executive of SHRM, he would be an opponent of unions.

Guild, formerly known as Guild Education, works for Fortune 500 companies like Walmart, Disney, JP Morgan Chase, and Chipotle to train and retrain workers as the workforce is systematically reduced through technology. Guild has been in financial decline after being lauded by Forbes and other business media.

If he is selected for the Department of Labor or any other government post, we'll have to see if Mr. Taylor's work at SHRM, Guild, or his other board seats affects management decisions, especially if the organization he manages is forced to downsize.  

Higher Education, Technology, and A Growing Social Anxiety

The Era We Are In

We are living in a neoliberal/libertarian era filled with technological change, emotional and behavioral change, and social change. An era resulting in alienation (disconnection/isolation) for the working class and anomie (lawlessness) among elites and those who serve them. We are simultaneously moving forward with technology and backward with human values and principles. Elites are reestablishing a more brutal world, hearkening back to previous centuries--a world the Higher Education Inquirer has been observing and documenting since 2016. No wonder folks of the working class and middle class are anxious. 

Manufactured College Mania

For years, authorities such as the New York Federal Reserve expressed the notion (or perhaps myth) that higher education was an imperative for young folks. They said that the wealth premium for college graduates was a million dollars over the course of a lifetime--ignoring the fact that a large percentage of people who started college never graduated--and that tens of millions of consumers and their families were drowning in student loan debt. 

2U, Guild Education, and a number of online robocolleges reflected the neoliberal promise of higher education and online technology to improve social mobility.  The mainstream media were largely complicit with these higher ed schemes. 

2U brought advanced degrees and certificates to the masses, using brand names such as Harvard, MIT, Yale, USC, University of North Carolina, and the University of Texas to promote the expensive credentials that did not work for many consumers. 

Guild Education brought educational opportunities to folks at Walmart, Target, Macy's and other Fortune 500 companies who would be replacing their workers with robotics, AI, and other technologies. But the educational opportunities were for credentials from subprime online schools like Purdue University Global. Few workers took the bait. 

As 2U files for bankruptcy, it leaves a number of debt holders holding the bag, including more than $500M to Wilmington Trust, and $30M to other vendors and clients, including Guild Education, and a number of elite universities. Guild Education is still alive, but like 2U, has had to fire a quarter of its workers, even downsizing its name to Guild, as investor money dries up. It continues to spend money on its image, as a Team USA sponsor.    

The online robocolleges (including Liberty University, Grand Canyon University, University of Phoenix, Purdue University Global, and University of Arizona Global)  brought adult education and hope to the masses, especially those who were underemployed. In many cases, it was false hope, as they also brought insurmountable student debt to American consumers. Billions and billions in debt that cannot be repaid, now considered toxic assets to the US government. 

Along the way there have been important detractors in popular culture, especially on the right. Conservative radio celebrity Dave Ramsey, railed against irresponsible folks carrying lots of debt, including student loan debt. He was not wrong, but he did not implicate those who preyed on student consumers. On the left, the Debt Collective also railed against student loan debt, long before the right, but they were often ignored or marginalized. 

Adapting to a Brutal System

The system  works for elites and some of those who serve them, but not for others, even some of the middle class. Good jobs once at the end of the education pipeline have been replaced by 12-hour shifts, 60 hour work weeks, bullsh*t jobs, and gig work. 

Working-class Americans are living shorter lives, lives in some cases made worse not so much by lack of education, but by the destruction of union jobs, and by social media, and other intended and unintended consequences of technology and neoliberalism. Millions of folks, working class and some middle class, who have invested in higher education and have overwhelming debt and fading job prospects, feel like they have been lied to.

We also have lives made more sedentary and solitary by technology. Lives made more hectic and less tolerable. Inequality making lives too easy for those with privilege and lives too difficult for the working class to manage. Lives managed by having fewer relationships and fewer children. Many smartly choosing not to bring children into this new world. All of this manufactured by technology and human greed.  

The College Dream is Over...for the Working Class

There are two competing messages about higher education: the first that college brings opportunity and wealth and the second, that higher education may bring debt and misery. The truth is, these different messages are meant for two groups: pushing brand name schools and student loans for the most ambitious middle class/working class and a lesser form of education for the struggling working class. 

In 2020, Gary Roth said that the college dream was over. Yet the socially manufactured college mania continues, flooding the internet with ads for college and college loans, as social realities point to a future with fewer good and meaningful jobs even for those with degrees. Higher education will continue to work for some, but should every consumer, especially among the struggling working class, believe the message is for them? 

Related links:

More than half of college grads are stuck in jobs that don't require degrees (msn.com)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins)

Edtech Meltdown 

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs

2U Declares Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Will Anyone Else Name All The Elite Universities That Were Complicit?

College Mania!: An Open Letter to the NY Fed (2019)

"Let's all pretend we couldn't see it coming": The US Working-Class Depression (2020)

The College Dream is Over (Gary Roth, 2020)

Robocollege Update

 

Robocolleges are a mix of for-profit and non-profit online colleges, both secular and Christian.  Their focus is on automation and reduced costs, particularly labor costs:

Instruction is delivered through automated Learning Management Systems (LMS) and online platforms, relying less on professors and more on pre-recorded lectures and automated grading. Even support staff are being replaced by chatbots.  

While some qualified individuals might be involved, educational content is often developed by large teams with varying expertise, potentially sacrificing quality for cost-effectiveness.

Marketing and advertising continue to be costly. But targeting marketing (e.g. targeting military service members and veterans, teachers, nurses, and government workers in low-income neighborhoods) can improve cost efficiency. 

Robocolleges offer degrees with a wide range of value to consumers (return on investment versus debt).  For people who need a degree (or an advanced degree) to play the game in government and medicine, these credentials may have value. 

Competency-based education and credits for life experience reduce the number of courses some students need to graduate.  Servicemembers going to Purdue Global, for example, can get an AA with as few as five college courses and a BS with as little as seven additional courses.

Cheating is probably easier for online students who are so inclined and whether these companies care is not really known.  

Southern New Hampshire (SNHU) continues to be the growth and efficiency leader, with the highest enrollment, more than 160,000 students. SNHU is also experimenting with artificial intelligence to reduce labor costs. In addition, SNHU works with Guild (aka Guild Education), which recruits workers from Walmart, Target, Waste Management, and other large employers.  

Grand Canyon (for-profit) and Liberty University (non-profit) target Christians for online credentials.  But oppressive debt is a concern with some of their programs. Social mobility for students is subpar.  

Purdue University Global and University of Arizona, Global Campus are two former for-profit colleges now owned by state universities. Information about their financial status is sketchy. Like SNHU, Purdue Global works with Guild to recruit working folks.  Purdue Global owes its online program manager. Kaplan Education, about $128 million.  Arizona Global has had financial difficulties which have affected the University of Arizona's bottom line.  

The University of Phoenix has returned to profitability by reducing instruction and student services by $100 million a year and legal costs by $50 million a year.  Consumers continue to file fraud complaints by the tens of thousands.  And debt is an enormous problem with former students.  It's not apparent whether Phoenix can maintain such enormous profits, but its future as a non-profit affiliated with the University of Idaho may reduce its tax burden and legal liabilities. 

Here are the most recent numbers from the US Department of Education College Navigator:

American Intercontinental University: 89 full-time instructors for 14,333 students.
American Public University System has 332 F/T instructors for 48,688 students.
Aspen University has 27 F/T instructors for 7,386 students.
Capella University: 180 F/T for 39,727 students.
Colorado State University Global: 40 F/T instructors for 9,565 students.
Colorado Technical University: 55 F/T instructors for 24,808 students.
Devry University online: 61 F/T instructors for 26,384 students.
Grand Canyon University has 550 F/T instructors for 101,816 students.*
Liberty University: 735 F/T for 96,709 students.*
Purdue University Global: 337 F/T instructors for 45,125 students.
South University: 41 F/T instructors for 7,707 students.
Southern New Hampshire University: 130 F/T for 164,091 students.
University of Arizona Global Campus: 122 F/T instructors for 34,190 students.
University of Maryland Global: 177 F/T instructors for 55,838 students.
University of Phoenix: 80 F/T instructors for 88,891 students.
Walden University: 235 F/T for 42,312 students.

*Most F/T faculty serve the ground campuses that profit from the online schools. 

 

Related links:

Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education (2023)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins, 2023)

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs (2021)

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents" (2019)

The Higher Education Assembly Line (2019)

 

 

 

 

College Meltdown 2.0

College Meltdown 2.0 is distinctly different than the College Meltdown that started in 2010. 

The first wave of the College Meltdown (2010-2021) resulted in a slow and steady drop in overall US college enrollment, with dramatic losses among for-profit colleges and community colleges. Corinthian Colleges, ITT Educational Services, and Education Management Corporation were three large for-profit chains to close. Small private liberal arts schools and regional universities also experienced losses.  More folks were moving into the growing educated underclass.  

Elements of College Meltdown 2.0 include publicly held corporations.  Click on the image to see the chart (Source: Seeking Alpha) 

College Meltdown 2.0 comes as the Coronavirus becomes more manageable.  However US fascism continues to advance, student loan debt is slowly approaching $2 trillion, and the 2026 enrollment cliff is just a few years away.  This new wave includes remnants of for-profit colleges like National American University, Stratford University, South University, the Art Institutes, University of Phoenix (owned by Apollo Global Management), Career Education Corporation (aka Perdoceo), and DeVry University (owned by Cogswell Education) as well as national accreditor ACICS. 

The largest element of College Meltdown 2.0 is federal student loan debt, which appears to be rising to an unsustainable level--as it hamstrings the lives of millions of families.  When mandatory student loan payments resume (scheduled for May 1), long-term default rates may range from 30 and 50 percent.  It also appears that at least $500 billion of the Federal Student Aid (FSA) student loan portfolio will be unrecoverable.  

College Meltdown 2.0 also involves online program managers (OPMs) that service elite schools (2U), regional universities (Academic Partnerships), and subprime robocolleges (Zovio-University of Arizona Global and Graham Holdings-Kaplan-Purdue University Global). 

Student loan servicers and private student loan companies (Maximus, Navient, Sallie Mae, Nelnet), publishers and other edtech enterprises (EducationDynamics, Chegg, Barnes & Noble Education, Coursera, and Guild Education) are implicated or at least entangled in the mess.  Higher education accreditors and student loan asset-backed securities (SLABS) are also worth monitoring.  

Related link: 2U Virus Expands College Meltdown to Elite Universities

Related link: How University of Phoenix Failed. It's a Long Story. But It's Important for the Future of Higher Education.

Related link: The Colbeck Scandal (South University and the Art Institutes)

Related link: Navient and the Zombie SLABS Meltdown (Bill Harrington*)

Related link: The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents"

Related link: Coursera IPO Reveals Bleak Future for Global Labor

Related link: Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents"

In a previous Higher Education Inquirer article, I presented frightening full-time faculty numbers at some large online universities which I call "robocolleges."  Full-time faculty at these robocolleges, in fact, are nearly nonexistent. Bear in mind that all of them are regionally accredited, the highest level of institutional accreditation, and the list includes well-known public university systems as well as for-profit ones.  

Robocolleges have de-skilled instruction by paying teams of workers, some qualified and some not, to write content, while computer programs perform instructional and management tasks. Learning management systems with automated instruction programs are known by different names and their mechanisms are proprietary.  As professor jobs are deskilled, tasks can be farmed out at reduced costs.  

Besides the human content creators who may be given instructional titles, other staff members at robocolleges are paid to communicate with students regarding their progress. The assumption is that managing work this way significantly reduces costs, and it does, at least in the short and medium terms.  However, instructional costs are frequently replaced by marketing and advertising expenses to pitch the schools to prospective students and their families.  Companies like EducationDynamics and Guild Education have filled the niche of promoting robocolleges to workers at a reduced cost but their overall impact is minimal.  

Meanwhile,  companies like Chegg profit from this form of learning, helping students game the system in greater numbers, in essence creating robostudents.  

The business model in higher education for reducing labor power and faculty costs is not reserved to for-profit colleges.  Community colleges also rely on a small number of full-time faculty and armies of low-wage contingent labor.  

In some cases, colleges and universities, including many brand name schools, utilize outside companies, online program managers (OPMs), to run their online programs, with OPMs like 2U taking up as much as 60 percent of the revenues.  OPMs can perform a variety of jobs, but are best known for their work in enrollment and retention.  Prospective students may believe they are talking to representatives of a particular university when in fact they are talking to someone from an outside source.  Noodle has disrupted the OPM model by selling their services ala carte, but only time will tell whether it has an impact, or whether schools will merely find less costly outsourced servicers.  

Outsourcing higher education has been a reality in US higher education for decades. And automation is also part of education, as it should, when it performs menial tasks, such as taking roll and doing preliminary work to determine student cheating.  It's likely that more schools will become more robotic in nature to reduce organizational expenses.  But what are the long-term consequences with long-term student outcomes, when automation is used to perform higher level tasks, and when outsourced individuals act in the name of brand name colleges?  

To get a small glimpse of this robocollege phenomenon, these schools cumulatively have about 3000 full-time instructors for more than a half-million students.  

American Intercontinental University: 51 full-time instructors for about 8,700 students.

American Public University System has 345 F/T instructors for more than 50,000 students. 

Aspen University has 34 F/T instructors for about 9,500 students.  

Capella University: 216 F/T for about 38,000 students.

Colorado State University Global: 34 F/T instructors for 12,000 students.

Colorado Technical University: 59 F/T instructors for 26,000 students.
Devry University online: 53 F/T instructors for about 17,000 students.

Grand Canyon University has 461 F/T instructors for 103,000 students.*  
Liberty University: 1072 F/T for more than 85,000 students.*
Purdue University Global: 346 F/T instructors for 38,000 students.

South University: 0 F/T instructors for more than 6000 students.

Southern New Hampshire University: 164 F/T for 104,000 students.

University of Arizona Global Campus: 194 F/T instructors for about 35,000 students.
University of Maryland Global: 193 F/T instructors for 60,000 students.

University of Phoenix: 127 F/T instructors for 96,000 students.

Walden University: 206 F/T for more than 50,000 students.

*Most of these full-time instructors are faculty at the physical campuses.  

University of Phoenix: Training Folks For Robowork

The Higher Education Inquirer has published a number of articles on robocolleges, robostudents, and robowork, noting that the University of Phoenix has been a pioneer in the evolution of making humans more machine-like (or in science fiction terms, cyborgs). This is an evolution that spans more than a century, with Frederick Taylor and his Scientific Management of Work and Clayton Christensen's Theory of Disruptive Innovation.

More recently, we have posted articles on artificial intelligence and the dehumanization of society, including futuristic work by renowned sociologist Randall Collins. 

The University of Phoenix, in the present, has taken another step in this profit-making dehumanization process, formal online customer service training for the international workforce. According to the University of Phoenix, customer service is in high demand globally, and UoPX offers a convenient series of professional development trainings for making human skills more efficient. It's not known how many humans are involved in teaching or content creation. What we do know is that the University of Phoenix relies on little human labor, with an average student-teacher ratio of 110 to one. 

What are your thoughts on this training program? And how does type of online education and tech work bode for humans and humanity?  

Related links:

Wealth and Want Part 4: Robocolleges and Roboworkers (2024)

Robocollege Update (2024)

New Data Show Nearly a Million University of Phoenix Debtors Owe $21.6 Billion Dollars (2024)

University of Phoenix and the Ash Heap of Higher Ed History (2023)

How University of Phoenix Failed. It's a Long Story. But It's Important for the Future of Higher Education (2022) 

Robocolleges, Artificial Intelligence, and the Dehumanization of Higher Education (2023)

AI-ROBOT CAPITALISTS WILL DESTROY THE HUMAN ECONOMY (Randall Collins, 2023)

Guild Education: Enablers of Anti-Union Corporations and Subprime College Programs (2021)

The Growth of "RoboColleges" and "Robostudents" (2019)

The Higher Education Assembly Line (2019)