fuck this job.com

Has Career Education Learned Its Lesson?
Despite government probes from without and proxy battles from within, this for-profit school appears ready to reward investors who grade on the curve.
It's amusing to ponder how Harvard's fictional Professor Kingsfield (he's the guy from The Paper Chase who told his first-year law students that their minds were "mush" and who delighted in humiliating them as often as possible) would react if he suddenly found himself teaching for a for-profit college such as Career Education (Nasdaq: CECO).
One can only imagine his reaction upon learning that he was supposed to offer his students "fast-paced programs that provide a good return on their tuition investment," in the words of Steve Bostic, CECO's largest individual stockholder.
Ah, but that was the Harvard of the 1970s -- bad haircuts, blackboards, chalk, and all -- and this is the state of higher education today -- dissident stockholders, volatile stock prices, online instruction, and grade inflation.
Going online
Although CECO's overall enrollments have slowed to a somewhat disappointing 12% as announced in the most recent earnings statement, the student population from the Online Education Group was up 70% to 30,000 during the same period. While revenue from the online business is lower than from the traditional business, this is still an encouraging trend.
The company also reported that revenues were up 23% in the second quarter year on year, and net income was up 44% to $0.50 per share. While some observers were concerned that management's guidance for the year was lower than expectations, I think the rapid growth in the online division might move CECO to the head of the class over the long term.
The conference, organized by the Graduate School of Business and the Stanford School of Education, included speakers exploring the rapidly changing world of postsecondary education. Discussing entrepreneurs in higher education was Jack Larson, chairman, president, and CEO of the Career Education Corporation. Founded in 1994, the company has become one of the world's largest providers of private, for-profit postsecondary education, with 78 global campuses offering degree and certificate programs in visual communication and design technologies, information technology, business studies, culinary arts, and health education. In fewer than 10 years, annual revenues have surpassed $1 billion, delivering a 2,150 percent return to shareholders.
"You just have to look for trends and walk into them in a big way," Larson explained of his successful business strategy. After 9/11, for example, the new focus on national security prompted him to invest in programs teaching criminal justice. When surveys showed more people eating out, he invested in well-known culinary schools, including the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. "Today," he said, "we train more chefs than anybody else in the world."