Email Editor Glen McGhee at gmcghee@aya.yale.edu. Trending hashtags: #4B, #ai, #collegemania #collegemeltdown, #democracy #empathy #healing #nonviolent #passion #protest #resistance #strikedebt
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
The Layoff.com: Observations of College Meltdown in Real Time (Updated September 29, 2024)
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
College Mania!: An Open Letter to the NY Fed (Opinion)
- Despite Rising Costs, College Is Still a Good Investment (Jaison R. Abel and Richard Deitz, NY Fed)
- The Educated Underclass: (Gary Roth in Inside Higher Education)
- College Is Not an Investment (George Leef in Forbes, 2013)
- "Crapademia" and the Mis-overeducation of America
- Is College Still Worth It? It’s Complicated (Saint Louis Fed)
Are these people mad? Have they not read Annie Nova (CNBC), Jillian Berman (Marketwatch) or Mike Vasquez (Chronicle of Higher Education)? Have they not glanced at Wikipedia or thelayoff.com or bothered to use IPEDS help? Have they read Suzanne Mettler’s “Degrees of Inequality”? Have they ever heard of the layoff.com or College Meltdown? Don't they listen to Dave Ramsey on the radio? The answer is no and probably no, no, no, no, no, no, definitely not because it’s too heavy, no, no, and no.
Have these guys no understanding of the outrageous costs of higher education: tuition, housing, board, text books, transportation, computers, fees, officially licensed college t-shirts, football tickets, concert tickets, pizza, beer, drugs, pregnancy tests, and who know what all else?
Don't they know about the millions who are underemployed after college, the millions that have delayed leaving home, delayed marriage, delayed having children, and delayed starting businesses? Don’t they know anyone who is suffering from the College Meltdown? Have they ever heard of the “gig economy” or talked to an “adjunct professor”? Don't they have friends or coworkers who have nervously cosigned on loans for their children?
Speaking of businesses, haven’t these NY Fed guys figured out that there is a failing for-profit college system, Bryant & Stratton College, luring people with slick ads, whose corporate headquarters is literally two blocks from their office? A school whose target demographics include single mothers with jobs and people with two jobs, who already can't make ends meet?
In 2019, subprime Bryant & Stratton College will be luring hardcore gamers with their esports programs. BSC already has junior college basketball at the dwindling Buffalo campus.
If you read the small print in the NY Fed article, these two wise guys from Buffalo oh so briefly mention that the wage premium doesn’t apply to 25 percent of the people who start. They note that the wage premium is muted in the 40 percent who don’t finish college. And the wealth premium, you know, the actual return on investment after trying to pay off the loans? Forget about it.
These guys don’t mention that more than 40 percent of all student debtors are not paying off their principal. Or that millions of Millennials with student debt are delaying marriage and kids, not starting families or businesses. And by having fewer kids, they are setting the nation up for another phase of the College Meltdown in 2026.
Nor did they note that peak enrollment was in 2010-11 and that numbers have decreased every year since then. I suppose they’d say that was all due to a great economy, like so many others who do not live near reality, even in Buffalo. Really, it would never have anything to do with outrageous prices or record-setting inequality.
And wait a second. Aren’t these two the guys who wrote College is Not for Everyone, back in 2014? What has happened? Have they too contracted College Mania?
Perhaps the men are talking about the business of education, which has been a good investment for some. The higher ed “racket” involving dorm building, restaurant building, gyms and climbing walls. Or the student loan business that’s booming and student loan asset-backed securities also known as SLABS. Or the online program managers that actually run colleges online. Or the marketing and ad agencies that are profiting hand over fist, as some students literally live in their cars or struggle with hunger. Or maybe they are talking about the bright future behind unregulated “human capital contracts” (What could go wrong?).
But why should I be so angry, literally fed up? The NY Fed is not the only organization feeding the “College Mania!” It’s everyone, aside from Dave Ramsey, Thomas Frank, and too few others. But who reads Thomas Frank? Hopefully it’s the same people who read the two guys from the NY Fed.
Saturday, May 18, 2019
JLL Partners facing tough decisions with Fortis Colleges and Institutes
One of the most notable for-profit college conglomerates, Education Affiliates, operates Fortis Colleges and Fortis Institutes and other lesser known trade schools. Fortis schools are managed by EA, but they are owned by JLL Partners, a New York City-based private equity firm.
At least eight Fortis campuses have closed, leaving 32 locations. But many of the remaining schools have been losing money and 14 are on US Department of Education Heightened Cash Monitoring.
In 2016-17 (the last year available for data), 21 Fortis locations were unprofitable: Centerville, Cincinnati, Columbia, Cutler Bay, Cuyahoga Falls, Grand Prairie, Houston, Indianapolis, Norfolk, Phoenix, Richmond, Baltimore, Birmingham, Cookeville, Erie, Forty Fort, Lawrenceville, and Nashville.
The problem from the beginning has not been with instructional quality, but with programs offering limited gainful employment. Schools like Fortis offer programs that often lead to low wage jobs, and low wages make student loan debt insurmountable. Student loan repayment rates for Fortis schools range from 20 to 24 percent.
So how long can JLL Partners continue to let the red ink continue with these assets? Can cuts be made without cutting instructional quality and student resources? And how can Fortis schools compete with free community college in states like New Jersey, Tennessee, and Indiana, where Fortis campuses exist?
JLL Partners has many notable investors, including the University of Missouri System, Montana Board of Investments, Colorado Public Employees' Retirement Association, Regents of the University of California, Travelers Companies, and the New Jersey Pension Fund. All of these funds need to pay off their obligations; with New Jersey, the pressure to create substantial returns is enormous.
JLL Partners also owns Ross Medical Education Centers, ACE Cash Express, CATO Research, Medical Card System, Pioneer Bank, Point Blank Enterprises, Viant, and Xact Data Discovery.
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Layoffs in Higher Education
The Layoff.com
is a "simple discussion board"
for workers who would like to learn more about
the rumors or possibility of job cuts in their organization. It's also
been helpful for us to understand what has been happening behind the
scenes in the US Higher Education business.
Monday, June 24, 2024
The Future of Publicly-Funded University Hospitals (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)
There are more than 200 active university medical centers (UMCs) and 1,700 teaching hospitals in the United States. These institutions, tied to America's major universities, employ large numbers of medical professionals, administrators, and laborers. While UMCs have grown in size, dominating areas in major cities, locating facilities that are financially well, well-staffed, and adequately resourced has become more difficult.
Also known as academic medical centers or AMCs, UMCs feel the financial strain of a number of social issues: a growing elderly population, drug overdoses, mental health problems, gunshot wounds, victims of car crashes, children with severe illnesses, and numerous medical problems related to poverty. Some UMCs are trying to grow out of their financial problems by expanding their networks and buying up other facilities that may provide more profitability.
Private equity is also taking over hundreds of hospitals and clinics across the US, finding value where they can, however they can. Private for-profit hospitals, for example, will steer their most vulnerable patients to UMCs. And they will cut out programs they cannot profit from. Publicly funded university hospitals often cannot turn people away or dump patients if they cannot pay their medical bills--or if they are not covered by premium insurance.
While the covid epidemic was horrifying for hospitals, the underlying conditions for many UMC's are a slow-motion disaster. University medical centers are facing financial challenges due to several key factors:
1. Rising costs outpacing revenue growth: Operating expenses, particularly for staff, facilities, and technology investments, are increasing faster than patient care revenue.
2. Reduced government funding: State support for academic health centers has been shrinking since the early 1990s. Federal and state funding for medical research and education has also stagnated or declined.
3. Lower reimbursement rates: UMCs are facing low reimbursement rates from Medicaid, Medicare, and commercial insurance. Cost-control measures introduced by the Affordable Care Act have also impacted revenues.
4. Legacy pension costs: Some UMCs are burdened with high fringe benefit costs inherited from state systems.
5. Increased competition: Many UMCs are too small to compete effectively in the current healthcare market against monopolies like HCA and Keiser. Their lack of scale gives them little leverage in negotiations for services and supplies.
6. Balancing multiple missions: UMCs must juggle patient care, research, and education. This can lead to inefficiencies, as physician time spent on research and teaching is less profitable than pure clinical care.
7. Infrastructure investments: UMCs need to make large investments in infrastructure and technology to maintain top-tier diagnostic and research capabilities
The main problem seems to be that the traditional financial model for academic medical centers is no longer sustainable in the current healthcare environment. Their operating costs are rising faster than their revenue sources can keep up, and they are struggling to maintain financial viability while fulfilling their multiple missions of patient care, research, and education.
Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs): While essential, NICU care for premature or critically ill newborns is expensive due to the high level of support needed.
Trauma Centers: Trauma care often involves a high volume of resources and unpredictable patient conditions, making it difficult to predict or control costs.
Mental Health Services: Mental healthcare reimbursement rates tend to be lower compared to other specialties, making these programs less profitable.
This strain at UMCs is under-girded by a dysfunctional and expensive healthcare system serving a population that is violent and unequal, and increasingly sedentary, unhealthy, disabled, elderly, and under psychological strain.
Financial problems and/understaffing and safety issues have been noted at:
University of Vermont Health Network (VM)
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (NJ)
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (PA)
West Virginia University Medicine (WV)
University of Miami Health System (FL)
Detroit Medical Center-Wayne State University (MI)
Marquette University Health Care (WI)
Cook County Health-Rush University (IL)
University of Chicago Medical Center (IL)
Oregon Health & Science University (OR)
UCLA Health (CA)
We expect to see more headlines about the declining finances at some university hospitals--and the downsizing that will follow. Fierce Healthcare has created a layoff tracker to monitor these events.
Related links:
Baby Boomers Turning 80: The Flip Side of the 2026 Enrollment Cliff
Friday, October 4, 2019
2U Expands College Meltdown to Elite Universities
Related Article: Observations of the College Meltdown in Real Time
Related Article: Many People Saw The Crash Of A Billion Dollar EdTech Company Coming (Derek Newton, Forbes)
Related Article: TCF Analysis of 70+ University-OPM Contracts Reveals Increasing Risks to Students, Public Education
Related Article: How They (Online Graduate Programs) Get You (Katerina Manoff, The Atlantic)
Once restricted to for-profit colleges and community colleges, the College Meltdown has advanced to elite colleges like Harvard and Cal Berkeley. These schools have enormous firewalls (e.g. large endowments, strong alumni associations, and powerful donors), but that does not shield them from skepticism about overpriced online graduate degrees and certificates. Adam Looney at Brookings has already outed USC about their outrageously priced MSW program, but that's just one example. The collapse of 2U, the online program manager (OPM) for several elite colleges, exposes this subprime elite degree mess even more.
With 2U, we are not talking about subprime colleges like University of Phoenix or Purdue University Global, but prestigious schools like American University, Baylor University, George Washington University, Harvard University, Pepperdine University, Rice University, Syracuse University, University of California, Berkeley, University of North Carolina, University of Southern California, and Washington University.
A recent entry for 2U at the layoff.com, found below, speaks volumes about rampant corruption in US higher education, particularly in online education. Whistleblowers are coming out and looking for lawyers. They are also describing in detail about the questionable business practices used to target consumers and the obscene prices that are offered for elite online degrees in fields that offer limited returns.
Admissions Counselors at 2U perform work much closer to fraud telemarketing than "counseling." The volume bleeds the human element out of every phone call because you will constantly be striving to hit metrics and enrollment goals.
3) 2U programs are godawful expensive. For many programs, 2U also has multiple offerings for the same discipline, so ACs working for the more expensive option are often out of luck if a student is admitted to a cheaper competing program. Kinda hard to convince someone to take out 40k more in loans than they have to. You will be tacitly encouraged to manipulate students into taking on more debt just to meet your goal. They want you to do everything just shy of outright lying. Admissions is a breeding ground for exaggerated claims, half-truths, and lies by omission. In short, you will be kicking water uphill every day in this role, trying to meet laughably unrealistic targets made by leadership.
That's not even to touch on the sham "Core Values" 2U shoves down your throat. They literally have these values in neon tube lights on the walls in HQ. Now, of course every company has their own brand of BS, but 2U is insane about theirs. It is cult-like. People use the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” unironically. Maybe it’s just me, but using the language of a mass s–c-de in a positive sense...doesn’t exactly sit right. Anyway, here are my thoughts on the core values.
1) ”Cherish every opportunity"–so long as you make 75 calls every day, annoying the heck out of people who just wanted a brochure about the program! Also, if someone has a low GPA or GRE scores and cannot help you meet your goal, that is not an opportunity, so don’t cherish it. This would be an accurate value if it said, "Cherish every opportunity that can make the company money. Forget everything else."
2) ”Be candid, honest, and open" —Honestly, for this one I might as well just post the prĂ©cis of the pending lawsuit against this company: “[2U] throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the Company faced increasing competition in online education and particularly regarding graduate programs; (2) the Company faced certain program-specific issues that negatively impacted its performance; (3) as a result, the Company’s business model was not sustainable; (4) the Company would slow its program launches; and (5) as a result, 2U’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.”
2U also doesn’t want you being “candid honest and open” with the students. Generally speaking, none of these students even know 2U exists, let alone that it gets a large chunk of their tuition money. You are lying by omission on every phone call, every time you send an email from your university email address. Students assume you are directly tied to the actual campus of the program you represent, because 2U spoofs the phone numbers, so every AC calling from say, Maryland, has an area code local to the school they are representing. Here's another hilarious thing: in September 2019, after mass firing 67 tenured employees and, again GETTING SUED BY ITS INVESTORS, 2U put out a "Framework for Transparency," which asserts, "2U has always publicly listed the degree and non-degree offerings we power," which, while technically true, is exactly the sort of PR/optics sophistry you should expect from this company. Yes, they list their university partners on their website. But at no point in an AC's correspondence with a prospective student is the name 2U ever brought up. Students would have to already know what an OPM is, and what 2U is for this "transparency" to actually do anything. As it stands, this Framework for Transparency looks to me like just another PR maneuver designed to give 2U rhetorical wiggle room to claim they’re being forthcoming while actually being the opposite.
3) ”Give a Damn!” – but not about all those poor schmucks with low GPAs who can't help you meet your goal.
4) “Relationships matter!” - remember where I said above they mass fired 67 employees one day? Yeah, they gave these people no notice– people who had been with the company for years, had helped build the business, and had bought into all of 2U's pompous, self-aggrandizing rhetoric about how they are "changing the world!" True believers, hard workers, in other words, fired en masse with no notice. These unfortunate individuals were literally called into an auditorium, let go, and informed “You’re welcome to work for the rest of the day if you want!”
5) “Don’t let the skeptic win!” — by which they mean don’t question anything or think for yourself, peon! Drink the Kool-Aid! DRINK IT I SAID! SHUT UP AND DRINK IT!!! HAVE YOU MADE YOUR DIALS FOR THE DAY YET?!
6) “Be bold and fearless” — I guess it was pretty bold and fearless to abruptly and callously fire a significant chunk of their loyal workforce, so kudos to 2U on this one. And it was pretty brazen to lie to their investors too. So, all right, I've give them this one.
7) “Make service your mission” — in other words, do good volunteer work and take pictures wearing 2U swag so we can take credit and get those sweet sweet PR social justice brownie points. 2U spends a lot of money promoting itself, getting named as a Great Workplace in magazines, maintaining this veneer that they are an ethical, socially conscious organization, when in reality, like most other companies, business is the first priority. Ethics and social consciousness are a very, VERY distant second. Actually, probably more like a very distant tenth or eleventh. This wouldn't even be annoying if they were just honest about it. I get it. A company exists and makes decisions solely to grow its business. So why does 2U seem to demand that its employees pretend otherwise?
8) “Have fun!” – you know the phrase “bread and circuses?” It means to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy but by diversion, distraction, or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace— by offering a palliative: for example, food (bread) or entertainment (circuses). Thanks Wikipedia. Yeah, that is 2U’s main operating strategy. They do all these extravagant events, e.g. random dance parties in HQ, renting out Six Flags for Halloween, or flying everyone to some destination once a year for company meeting. Superficially these are nice, until you remember that these events are bonkers expensive, and that 2U will then lay off 67 people at a moment’s notice due to monetary concerns. I feel reasonably safe in saying those employees would rather have kept their jobs than gotten to see Flo-Rida live in concert. Moreover, the events, particularly company meeting, are basically thinly veiled attempts at brainwashing, stoking the CEO's messiah complex. They give a lot of ra-ra, gosh-aren’t-we-awesome speeches and make you stand in an auditorium chanting company slogans (again, DRINK THE KOOL-AID, SERF). They get great performers and speakers—Michelle Obama in 2018, for example—who lend specious legitimacy to 2U’s alleged mission and values, but are probably told nothing about the company beyond its claims of being "an innovative tech start up increasing accessibility in higher ed."
9) “Strive for excellence!” — in other words, light yourself on fire daily to keep the higher-ups warm. Break your back to carry the company.
In short, this company is an object lesson in disingenuous corporate doublespeak, bad faith business practices, and dogmatic, cultish conformity. Their core values are a bad joke, and if you are an independent thinker at all, you will not like it here. Also, for the record, I was not fired. I left of my own accord before all the firings and lawsuits started. This is not some disgruntled, terminated ex-employee sounding off. This is just an honest appraisal of how 2U does business from my perspective. Work here at your own peril.