a new strategy to boost enrollment Seeking a fresh start, battered for-profit colleges give themselves a new name - The Hechinger Report
I think it wouldn't be a terrible thing for a number of schools to rebrand themselves and drop the crappy marketing intern names they took on. Univeristy of Phoenix? Yeah, I normally support naming a school after a physical place, but they could use a fresh start. American InterContinental University? The school most often flagged as "sounding fake." CEC can do better. Trident? Dumb. Ditch certificates and associate programs. B.S. And above and if they need some lower price point products start selling ridiculous certifications. HRCI must be making a mint off of all of the SPHRs in the world.
No, Trident GUM. See how brilliant it was? (I think it was obvious they wanted to retain the TUI designation, but I agree it's dumb.) A good one: The Graduate School of America, located in the same city containing the Mall of America, changing its name to Capella U. So much so that SHRM decided to get into the act and split with HRCI in order to offer their own certifications. (Grandfathering all those SPHR and PHR holders, of course.) It is not clear to me that SHRM is making a dent, however.
American InterContinental University always makes me think of the old WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Champion.
SHRM and HRCI paired nicely. Even the lower tier SHRM events had decent attendance because people, nearing the end of their certification, will go to anything to get enough CE to renew. SPHR and PHR are well entrenched in the HR world. There are many job descriptions with the requirement written into them (and many companies don't change job descriptions very often). SHRM would have been wiser to try to create a certification that wasn't already covered by HRCI rather than trying to directly compete with them. I imagine there will be some SHRM groupies who jump on board with the newest alphabet soup. But I would also guarantee that they won't let their SPHR lapse. It will be popular with the people who collect certifications but I doubt it will ever have a significant impact on hiring. SHRM has always been a great platform for professional networking but HRCI took the cake when it came to putting fun letters after your name. To me this is a bit like Stanford's Project Management Certification; it is unlikely to replace the PMP but a current PMP might want to tack it on just to have some Stanford bling on his/her resume.
