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Employees with Education Management Corporation (EDMC), the Pittsburgh-based for-profit educator, are bracing for layoffs which could come in the next few days.
Employees who have asked not to be identified have told City Paper that departmental meetings were held throughout the Pittsburgh office this morning. While some employees say they were assured their own jobs would be safe, supervisors have told employees that the layoffs would be coming by week’s end. Early indications are that layoffs may hit EDMC’s Online Higher Education staff hard, but employees have said details were “scarce.” They were not told, for example, how many positions overall are to be cut.
Calls to EDMC spokeswoman Jaqueline Muller have not yet been returned.
The layoffs would come in the wake of significant challenges for the company over the past year.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice hit the school with a civil lawsuit over its recruitment policies.
Congress too has stepped up its scrutiny of the for-profit industry as a whole. There has been Congressional testimony accusing EDMC of aggressive recruitment strategies, including “gaming” statistics on post-graduate employment. (EDMC has denied the accusations, citing the results of an internal investigation.) And just yesterday, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois introduced legislation to curb the amount of taxpayer-funded tuition aid such schools could get for educating veterans.
The bill is in response to claims that companies like EDMC and the University of Phoenix were targeting veterans and their education funds earned through the G.I. Bill.
In a statement reported by Bloomberg News, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said the proposed legislation “will close a loophole that has made veterans and active duty military major targets of deceptive marketing and aggressive recruitment, rather than students treated with the respect their service deserves.”
More on this story as it develops.
This article appears in Jan 25-31, 2012.
EDMC employees reportedly being warned of layoffs by week’s end
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this comes as no surprise
It’s shame, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh used to be well-respected, a quality education for artistic students…that was until EDMC turned it into a profit center and totally disregarded the students.
I can personally attest to the shoddy management, unethical sales tactics and complete lack of focus on the most important part of the equation, the student. IMO, I hope they fold. Sure, it’s hit job-wise, but believe me when I say this “school” is a sham.
Profits over people. It is a corporation, what did you expect?
So sad, I guess that’s what happens when you grow too fast and upper managment is lacking experience. God bless all the employees and their families as they struggle to get through this.
Let us not lose proper focus here. Blaming the civil lawsuit, the Congressional testimony, and the legislation aimed to protect veterans for EDMC’s decision to reduce its workforce is a bit like blaming Japan for being in the way of the tsunami. One is the cause and the other is the effect of a disaster.
While EDMC is quite adept at denying allegations or simply not responding to questions asked when it behooves them – let us not forget that there are very solid FACTS behind those allegations and attempts by Congress to fix the damage being done to their students.
EDMC targets low income individuals who oftentimes did not even graduate from high school, who are then subjected to high pressure salespeople who use guilt and personal pain as motivators to manipulate them to enroll. Students are then bilked out of outrageous sums of money (upwards of 100K for a bachelor’s degree, more if they are living on campus), they are pressured into using taxpayer money in the form of student grants and loans and high interest private loans for an education that is, by and large, subpar.
Less than 50% of their students actually graduate and the ones who do are offered very little in the way of any tangible, productive help to find jobs. EDMC then crowns the whole pack of lies with fabrications of placement data designed to use against prospective students and the United States Government to convince them they are doing a superb job of educating American students. (EDMC denies those allegations? Yeah, so did Richard Nixon.)
All the while people and politicians have been clamoring for reform – how did EDMC react? Did they spend some of their huge profit margin on providing better education, better services for students? NO! They spent millions of dollars hiring lobbyists and buying politicians to keep them from doing the honest and reputable thing of providing a product that was worth the cost.
EVERYONE who works within this heinous corporation is fully aware of the countless ways in which the most vulnerable in our society are being exploited without regard to their well-being – so that EDMC can gain unlimited access to the Federal Aid to Students Program. Just ask the thousands of Pittsburghers who have gone through that revolving door of employment there. All of the stories are the same. None of them pretty. Those who choose to stay must sell their soul to do so. In that light, a layoff might just be the best thing that ever happened to them.
As a former employee of EDMC I can definitively say that the first comment, though unnecessarily dramatic, is on point with one key exception; none of EDMC’s schools guarantee or offer placement of any kind. They do offer “Career Services” which includes resume assistance, mock-interviews, networking and the like but for certain, we were never encouraged to offer any kind of placement. What you may be speaking of is a limp, loaded statistic that we were required to spout regarding the percentage of students working in their fields within a certain time-frame following graduation.
Johnny Kline and his team of ex-UoP management cronies couldn’t manage their way out of a paper bag. You sit in your plush offices, raking in millions in salary while the backbone of the company, many of whom have advanced degrees, are hired at $30k/year. Is Team Johnny taking a pay cut?
The ship has been sinking for a while and they had to take time to teach all the inexperienced management the legal ways of getting rid of people. I am an ex employee of EDMC and what has concerned me the most is the younger managements unethical behavior that ran rampant. These young people had only rewards for their ethics. Good Luck to them when they go to different jobs – they will reap their karma and realize that not every company operates under these standards. Go Get them Karma !!! wish I was around to see the results!!!!
If you are affected by the looming layoffs at EDMC? We want to hear from you. Email me at cdeitch@steelcitymedia.com
I have worked for EDMC for over 10 years and I can say they have never been less concerned about students and more concerned about profits.
The Art Institute of Pittsburgh has been a contributor to Pittsburgh culture for 91 years and has helped make Pittsburgh a better place including by revitalizing a substantial portion of downtown with new academic buildings and dormitories. The truth today is that the Art Institute may cease to exist as it is hit from two sides, vulture capitalistic management that seeks to extract anything of value and sell it to enhance “shareholder equity,” and the Obama administration, which seeks to close for-profit schools on principle as a way of sticking it to the Republicans, irrespective of the merits of any single school. Don’t lose sight of the fact however that schools like this pioneered the idea of art school as a training ground for professionals rather than an esoteric place to pick up some culture while memorizing the names of the old masters.