University of Phoenix owner to be sold amid shrinking enrollment

The owner of the for-profit University of Phoenix will go private in a sale to a group of investors amid shrinking enrollment and revenue

A group of investors — including The Vistria Group, Apollo Global Management affiliates and Najafi Companies — agreed to acquire the publicly traded Apollo Education Group (APOL) in a $1.1 billion deal.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/02/08/apollo-education-najafi-companies-vistria-group/79997402/

 

same story, different source

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/business/dealbook/apollo-education-group-university-of-phoenix-owner-to-be-taken-private.html?_r=0

 

These are private equity firms. They acquire companies--usually struggling ones or start-ups--to make money from them. For start-ups, they often take them public with an IPO, cash out, then get out. For more mature companies already publicly traded, they take them private and do one of two things. Either they figure out a way to make them run better--more efficiencies or perhaps by merger--or they gut the company, saddle it with debt, then bankrupt it. (After selling off profitable pieces, of course.)

Gee, I wonder what's going to happen to Apollo?

 

I would say the latter...what do you think Rich...unless...they truly want to change the UOP model...and I am not sure they do

 

I worked there full-time for a year and taught as an adjunct for two more after that. I don't see the fluidity necessary for change, but that doesn't mean it can't be imposed. But who would do it? It requires expertise in both business/finance and higher education. Perhaps the new owners will partner with the current operators, but that hardly seems likely. They might instead spin off the more fungible aspects--sell them--and then dump the remainder, if such surgery can be performed without killing the patient.

It might be like Yahoo, where the some of the pieces are more valuable than the whole enterprise. Sell what's good and write off the rest. Or perhaps this is much ado about nothing and merely represents a new set of investors/stakeholders looking to make incremental changes favoring a long-term turnaround. Right.

 

I have no real clue about this stuff but I've had the impression that investors, like those in question, have a track record and a style. You could look back on their history of acquisitions, etc. and see a pattern. A pattern of turnarounds or a pattern of sell-offs. Is that true or maybe I'm just watching too many movies?

 

My school, NCU was purchased in 2008 from SCUPS and is now owned by Rockbridge Growth Equity, LLC and Falcon Investments, LLC.

I think it has become a better school since my BS studies (SCUPS era) and now during my PhD.

Maybe that will be the case of UoP.

 

50,000 students flee

University of Phoenix owner sells as 50,500 students flee - Feb. 8, 2016

 

Looks like I made the right decision to cash out everything when I stopped teaching for them.

 

The headline of that article is misleading. Nowhere does it discuss any students leaving. Rather, the figure is a drop in enrollments. The number could come from a variety of factors--few admissions, students dropping out, students transferring, students graduating, etc. All are likely contributors to the figure, with admissions--not dropouts--being the main culprit.

The headline makes it sound like 50K students up and quit. Yes, that would be news. But that's not what happened.