Is AIU Trying to Become the UoP?

I am getting so sick to death of the AIU ads popping up all over my e-mail sties, and other visited sites. One false click and away it goes to the AIU Request Info site. My popup stopper doesn't stop AIU, for some reason, on Firefox. Are they trying to annoy people to death and take UofP's place?

 

Penn State online campus has began doing more onlone marketing in the form of banner ads, etc. No pop-ups yet.

 

Annoy people to death, no.

Become UoP, yes.

Apollo Group Inc. Net Income $277,774,000
Career Education Corp Net Income $179,619,000

Something else I found interesting,

Apollo CEO Pay - $5.21M
CEC CEO Pay - $1.51M

Wow!

 

CEC CEO Jack Larson is a good man - had dinner with him a few times, and he is very down to earth.

Cheers,

George

 

AIU still calls me for a Bachelor's degree, I submitted information to them like 4 years ago, but so does UOP, and I have one from them!! go figure....

 

AIU is a similar institution to UoP and competes for the same market. As annoying as UoP's market straegy can be, one thing is obvious: it works. UoP has become hugely successful and scares the daylights out of traditional brick & mortar universities, such as mine. I would be surprised if AIU did not try the same methods as UoP.

 

Gotta get me one of these!

Wow, indeed.

The math is pretty straightforward. Let's run the numbers for a hypothetical Chydenius College (CC), which is accredited by North Central or Western, because they'll accredit anybody.

Being regionally accredited, CC students are eligible for Title IV funding. Thus, tuition equals the maximum that the Department of Education is willing to underwrite. These days, that is around USD 500 per credit.

Courses are 3 credits each. Let's have our students complete 12 courses per year.

USD 500 x 3 x 12 = USD 18,000 per student per year.

If we enroll 10,000 students, that makes a gross income of USD 180 million per year.

Because CC is run by people who are too lazy to learn how to modify and maintain Moodle or ATutor, we'll shop content management out to eCollege at USD 100 per student per course.

USD 100 x 12 courses per year x 10,000 students = USD 12 million

Pricey, but easy to manage from an administrative perspective.

We'll need instructors. Let's have a student:teacher ratio of 25:1 and assume that we'll work our instructors hard and get 12 courses per year out of each.

Let's pay each instructor USD 1,500 per course. This way, 1/25th of the tuition that we collect goes to pay the instructor.

USD 180 million / 25 = USD 7.2 million

Assume that, say 25% of gross revenue covers Admissions, Registration, Student Services, Finiancial Aid, etc.

USD 180 million x 25% = USD 45 million

---

Revenue

180,000,000

Expenses

12,000,000 platform
7,200,000 instructors
45,000,000 staff & facilities

64,200,000 TOTAL

Profit

115,800,000 NET

---

Add to this the profit from the Chydenius College bookstore and subtract a bit for a nice office building someplace inexpensive, and you still end up with a nice $100 million for marketing and shareholder dividends.

That's why you keep seeing those AIU pop-ups.

 

Let's run the numbers for a hypothetical Chydenius College (CC), which is accredited by North Central or Western, because they'll accredit anybody.

Please validate this statement.

AIU is accredited by SACS, not North Central or Western Association of Colleges and Schools.

Another for profit, Strayer U, is accredited by Middle States, so that's 3 of the 6 regionals right there, not sure I see your point....

 

HA! The troll-bait worked.

Yes, I know that AIU is accredited by SACS. However, I am familiar with SACS, and would rather base Chydenius College's main campus in North Central territory. North Central has a reputation for being more liberal than SACS.

My point was that there is a lot of money to be made in education. That's what all those numbers were about.

One of the questions was whether one should expect to see more pop-up ad for AIU. The $100 million marketing budget hypothesized above suggests a big, fat, "Yes."

 

Troll bait....I won't even get into that, I think that several of the more prominent members of this board can confirm I am not a troll. I asked a legitimate question, and you came back with a snide answer, I'm so surprised

 

I am surprised at this. For one thing, I would think Northeastern would blow the socks off UofP just in tuition alone. Northeastern's tuition is $125/credit hr. UoP is $460/credit hr. That's a MAJOR difference.

What is Northeastern doing to beat UoP in the market then?

I know 4 Northeastern Illinois grads . I only know 1 Phoenix grad...and my BIL took classes at Northeastern last year. To me, this says a lot. I don't even live in Chicago. Maybe I have just been in unusual circumstance to have known these grads.

 

Sorry chydenius, aic712 is far from being a troll.

aic712, you need to try harder [at being a troll]!

 

Thanks PHD,

No worries, everyone this board knows there is money to be made in education, we don't need a math problem to tell us so.

 

The thing that really bothers me about AIU is the creepy woman in most of their ads... you know, the vertical ones that appear in sidebars. Now that I have Adblock on Firefox I don't have to look at them anymore, thank goodness. She has a severe blonde haircut and an evil, determined look in her eyes like she's about to turn into a giant spider and use your paralyzed body to incubate her young (yes, I watch too many horror movies).

 

hahaha, UOP uses the same woman for some of the brochures on campus, she does look freakish

 

I do not doubt it for a moment. I am enjoying these exchanges.

Seriously, though, I had assumed that the readers of this board were generally aware of the differences among the six regional accrediting agencies.

The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), which covers the Southeast, has a reputation for being one of the most stringent of the six. For example, instructors of AA and BA (but not AS) courses at SACS-accredited schools are required to have a) a Masters degree, and b) a minimum of 18 graduate credits in the subjects that they teach. Instructors of AA and BA courses at Northcentral- and Western Schools-accredited schools are required to have a Masters degree and 9 credits in the subjects that they teach.

Whether SACS's credential requirement translates into superior quality of education, I will leave to other to debate. (I've made my views known elsewhere, concerning the measuring of inputs. I don't have a dog in this race.)

 

I'd like to offer a challenge to provide the NCA source for the above information.

 

Hi

I think you have a good point. My niece works as an instructor in a junior college in Southern California with only a BA degree.

 

To be an instructor at the AS level, you only need to have an AS in the subject area. However, to be an instructor at the AA level, you need to have a minimum of 18 graduate credits in the subject area (for SACS at least).

There is a big difference between teaching at the AS level verses the AA level. The AS is more technical or vocational, wheras the AA is more collegiate and of the Arts.

< ducks head for incoming stones >

 

Hi MA

It is a junior college w/o any vocational programs just AA degrees. Where are you pulling that info from? Thanks!