Ashford University Lays off 450 people

Ashford University Cuts 450 Jobs | NBC 7 San Diego

You got to love the personal touch :-(

Shawn

 

Good Lord, a video to announce they're being fired? Are they for real?

Beyond insensitive.

 

The announcement via video shouldn't seem that odd, Ashford does offer online degrees. This was merely distance termination.

A statement from Ashford University said the following:

"Ashford University is committed to providing its students with the best opportunity to succeed, and, to that end; a reorganization of Ashford's student-facing staff has been implemented with the goal of improving student retention and academic success. As a result, 400 Ashford employees have been reassigned to roles that will support this new process and, regrettably, approximately 450 Ashford Admissions positions in San Diego and Denver have been eliminated." Source: Ashford University Cuts 450 Jobs | NBC 7 San Diego

450 Admissions positions? 450 people in one school working in admissions? And that isn't the entire Admissions department, Ashford had to keep some of the personnel. Were these Admissions positions or telemarketing positions?

 

Ashford, like many for-profit schools, is noted for aggressive marketing and recruiting (= "admissions"). Earlier this year, it was reported that Bridgepoint Education (Ashford's corporate owner) employed 1,700 recruiters. So they can probably afford to lose 450. As the news story states, the laid-off employees "worked primarily in the recruitment area."

Bridgepoint has historically spent more on recruiting and marketing than on teaching. The numbers reported earlier this year were:

$ 2,714 for recruitment (on an annual per-student basis)
$ 700 for education (on annual per-student basis)

While the exact numbers may be disputed, anyone can verify -- from Bridgepoint's own financial statements -- that they spend more on "marketing and promotional" expenses than on "instructional costs and services".

 

In the 2009 movie "Up in the Air", George Clooney works for a company that handles corporate downsizing. The conmpany introduces a program where they fire people over the Internet. But that was fictional -- it wouldn't happen in real life.

 

There is an interesting blog about Ashford from the perspective of current and former employees. According to the most recent comment, the laid-off employees were immediately classified as "security threats", and were not allowed back to their cubicles to retrieve their personal possessions. Their stuff will be mailed to them.

 

“We were called in to this meeting that we were called in for on Friday, and we had no idea what this meeting was,” a laid off employees told NBC 7 San Diego. “This video comes on and within 30 seconds they’re like, ‘Your position no longer exists, you’re terminated'.

Oh, for the LOVE of GOD! Shut... this... "school"... DOWN!!!

NOW!

 

This is probably a way for them to move more to their accredited state. I think they are planning on hiring more employees in their IA location to have a stronger presence there to ease the the HLC's need for a presence in their region.

Also, That is the dirtiest way to let people go... pull out a 30 second video. How informal and impersonal. It's obviously about the number for sure... people are just a number to them and that's sickening.

 

They are doing this for the regional accreditors i think. They had 450 more recruiters than they should of had in the first place it appears. Now they have to hire "seasoned" professors for their reorg, I know that was one of the big complaints the RA had with Ashford when they said no thanks to giving them RA in the West.

Like a few here stated, Bridgepoint is big money and will make it work.. I do believe that they will.

But that does not help the folks that are out of a job, especially now.

 

This is very interesting.... Good thing he left before this whole fiascoes went down.

 

Mass lay-offs without notice are NOT unusual. MANY big companies have done it, and will continue to do it. Just ask the 650 Pink Slime workers (of Mc nugget fame) that recently had no notice that they were doomed.

The reality of it sucks, but shutting down a school because of lay-offs would be nonsense and irresponsible. How many others would be hurt with a freakish move like "shutting down" a school. Countless numbers of students, instructors, and admin staff - again irresponsible.

One of the big issues the RA had with Ashford was aggressive recruiting, AND the recruiter to professor ratio. Now that they are making strides to fix the issues raised by the audit the school still s&cks because of it? I don't agree.

GRANTED, the way they did it was piss poor, however would a pink slip next to their time card have been better, umm no ?

Either way it gets sliced, the fact that so many got terminated still bites.

 

What a way to deal with lay offs. Cold and impersonal. Their stuff will be mailed to them? This employer seems to treat their workers like cattle, or a commodity if you will. VERY low in my book.

Abner

 

Why? Because they laid off people in a cold way?

 

No, and honestly this incident wouldn't be the catalyst. The poor academic standards, lack of accountability in regards to academic honesty, poor treatment of students... and as we see a perfect example of right here, poor treatment of employees. All of those things combined, topped off by a regional accreditor publicly reporting its findings further legitimizing the terrible operations that many apologists of this so-called institution of higher learning have tried to deflect for years.

This is just one more indicator, an infuriating one. One that should've never happened that way. It's perfectly understandable to cut staff in certain situations. It's perfectly fine to cut staff to meet the guidelines of an accreditor in this situation. It's not okay to do it in the way it was done. They don't treat their employees like human beings. They don't appear to treat their students like human beings either (I know I wasn't treated like one when I made the mistake of taking classes there).

But what concerns me even more is that every time Ashford has yet another public fiasco, it reflects badly on the entire for-profit sector because the media seldom fails to mention that Ashford is part of it. It's a shame they can't just explain that Ashford is just a bad program, and it's not because it's for-profit.

 

I am a member of the AU online faculty - and I don't find your conceptualization to be an accurate one. In a number of areas mentioned, I have found AU to have been BETTER than other for-profit (and not-for-profit) institutions.

 

Agreed, now let's shut down WalMart too...they treat their employees really bad also.

 

Ashford may treat employees badly. But there isn't much that the employees can do about it.

Ashford's plunging reputation may hurt its students and graduates. But they can't do very much either.

Ashford's problems with accreditation agencies could, in the worst case, cause them to close their doors in the future. But even that isn't really a problem. They made truckloads of profit while it lasted.

Their biggest problem may actually be one that hasn't been mentioned yet -- the potential issue of securities fraud. WASC publicly denied accreditation to Ashford in July 2012 -- but according to that announcement, WASC started privately expressing concerns to Ashford in mid-2011. So Bridgepoint Education (the owners of Ashford) knew they were in trouble with WASC a year before the public knew it.

Allegedly, Bridgepoint did not disclose that info to their investors; instead, Bridgepoint insiders began selling off all of their stock. When the WASC news went public in July 2012, the stock collapsed. Investors and shareholders lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

The investment community isn't too happy about this sequence of events. Try googling the terms "Bridgepoint Education Lawsuit"; see if you can count the number of different law firms that have filed suits since July. Hint: the results won't fit on one page. The issues are summarized in this story:

Bridgepoint can blow off employees, students, alumni, and accreditors. But it may be harder to blow off angry Wall Street investors and their lawyers.

 

We have been discussing this very subject on facebook today. Here are the links we were discussing:

Jul 05, 2012 - Bridgepoint Education Inc (BPI) CEO Andrew S. Clark sells 33,738 Shares

Pomerantz Law Firm Reminds Shareholders of Bridgepoint Education, Inc. of Upcoming Deadline -- BPI

Mr. Barling

And after A LOT of debate, I finally had enough and posted this:

"At the end of the day, no matter your position on Ashford, we all agree (I think) that what's needed is COMMUNICATION. Honesty. Transparency. Ashford, and Bridgepoint, need to start talking. They need to address the VALID concerns of the students. Address the WASC report and not just say "we're appealing it". They need to take some ethics classes and learn fair business practices. You have the CEO committing securities fraud, employees being fired with no warning, lawsuits, investigations, accreditation issues. The time for messing around has passed. They had their fun, made their money. Now they need to either COMPLETELY revamp the way they do EVERYTHING (I dont honestly know if they can or will, given the cost and time constraints involved in something like that) or close up shop. And let's not forget that if Bridgepoint folds, Ashford isnt the only school affected. There's University of the Rockies, as well. Time for some OWNERSHIP. They messed up, so now they need to 'fess up and fix it. Anything less in UNACCEPTABLE and insulting to all of the students who poured their time, money, effort, and trust into this school."

Ashford University has become a VERY hot topic in the last week or so. And the employees being fired was just the icing on the crumbling cake. You should see the Ashford facebook page. Former employees are coming out of the woodwork. It's been....interesting. lol

 

That's an attempt to minimize. It's not just my conceptualization, it's the reality of many including a regional accreditor.

I think it's great that you can have positive findings for yourself. I think that's just the tops, I truly do. But the reality is that your findings are merely a whisper in an angry crowd at this point, and they don't in any way negate the damning findings of WASC, the thousands of students and staff/faculty coming forward to tell the truth about its poor operation, or yet another public demonstration of why this program simply does not get it and doesn't appear to care, whether you want to accept it or not... and that's being said with plenty of evidence that the school is a disaster. All of these people can't be lying. It can't all be them and none of Ashford.

But in far more extreme situations, even Hitler and Stalin had their supporters, so I can understand how even this would have supporters as well.

 

But as I've said, that's not the main reason for Ashford needing to go. This is just one more public indication of their seemingly perpetual ineptitude.