Thread regarding University of Phoenix layoffs

Worth of Online Degree TIME Magazine Oct 2012 Article Kayla Webley is a Staff Writer at TIME.

Summary at end of article

So the answer to whether an online degree can help you get a job appears to be yes — sometimes. TIME asked human-resources executives at several Fortune 500 companies whether an online course would be viewed as a credible credential in a prospective employee, and not all of them agreed. One executive was concerned about how students were graded and assessed, while another worried about the reputation of online universities and believed that online classes were generally not as challenging as traditional college courses. These are the challenges that MOOCs, for-profits and corporate-academic partnerships still need to surmount. As Western Governors’ Mendenhall says, “At the end of the day, maybe the biggest contribution of the MOOCs will be adding credibility to online education.” At least he hopes so. The industry could use it.

Another excerpt from this article: The newest players in the online-education space have no problem with name recognition. Unlike the University of Phoenix, the prestigious universities behind Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs — Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Princeton among them — have ironclad academic reputations. In fact, Coursera, edX and Udacity, the three largest MOOC providers, have heard from companies who have expressed interest in hiring students who perform well in their courses.

Looks like in this article that reputation has a lot to do with the honor/integrity associated with an online institution or courses taken online. Hmmmmm

Article about Tim Slottow from Previous Employer Univ of Michigan 'https://studentunionofmichigan.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/how-different-is-the-public-university-of-michigan-from-the-for-profit-university-of-phoenix-ask-tim-slottow/

How Different is the Public University of Michigan from the For-Profit University of Phoenix? Ask Tim Slottow by Michael Proppe

Line from this article: Tim Slottow is no stranger to increasing profit at the cost of providing a good, affordable education. (remember he is set at 2.7 M in the golden parachute buy-out for UOP-compensation for this downward spiral)

On April 1, 2014, the University of Michigan announced on The University Record that its Chief Financial Officer Tim Slottow would become the new president of the for-profit University of Phoenix. It sounded so ridiculous that even Michael Proppe, the president of the Central Student Government (CSG) and someone who we don’t usually see eye to eye with, was convinced it was an April fools joke. What could the CFO of a public university like the University of Michigan possibly know about running a for-profit private university like the University of Phoenix? Wouldn’t it be hard for him to adjust to the logic of a for-profit (recently probed by the Senate) after spending 12 years working at an ostensibly public institution? If Slottow’s tenure at the University of Michigan is any indication, the answer is a resounding “No.”

The institution whose finances Tim Slottow was charged with managing is no longer public in any meaningful sense of the word. During Slottow’s tenure as CFO at the University of Michigan from 2002 to 2014, one year of lower division undergraduate in-state tuition more than doubled, increasing from $6,395 to $12,948. If tuition had kept pace with inflation it would be about $8,346. Furthermore, the University has radically reshaped the student body, privileging wealthier students whose families can afford exorbitant out-of-state tuition while pricing out students from lower class backgrounds and Black, Latin@, and Native American students. There’s now more students at U-M whose parents make over $200,000 that there are students whose parents make less than $75,000.* Rich students want fancy facilities, so the university has dedicated hundreds of millions of dollars to expensive, unnecessary construction projects. The University now brings in over $1 billion in revenue each year from students’ tuition (just under half of which are paid for with loans).

Slottow’s management of the University’s finances, however, must have been even more attractive to the University of Phoenix’s board of trustees. His accomplishments are duly noted in the University’s press release:

Among his many accomplishments are a U-M endowment that now stands at $8.4 billion and the highest possible bond ratings from both Standard & Poor’s (AAA) and Moody’s Investor Services (Aaa). His leadership has shaped many initiatives to enhance the student and employee experience including the physical transformation of campus with new and renovated facilities.

We’ve previously discussed the way that the University leverages its excellent credit rating on the backs of its students. By pledging student tuition as collateral for its construction bonds, the University is able to secure extremely favorable interest rates for itself. The flip side, however, is that students are forced to take on increasing debt loads at higher interest rates to be able to study here. Furthermore, to maintain such a stellar bond rating, Slottow has tied the university increasingly to the whims of Wall Street investors:

Investors see the university’s commitment to raising tuition and attacking labor as an assurance that profits will flow uninterrupted through the university to them, and they demand these conditions in order to buy the university’s debt. In short, the university administration, in order to sell bonds needed to build buildings for wealthy students, has committed itself to continuously raising tuition and impoverishing its labor force, which has the effect of forcing more and more students deeper and deeper into debt and more workers (from GSIs to lecturers to CNAs in the healthcare system) into increasingly risky, marginal lives.

As for the endowment, students and workers will see barely any of that $8.4 billion pool Slottow and the rest of the administration are so proud of. With their tuition, students contribute about four times as much as the endowment does each year to the University’s operations. Meanwhile, that money is being funneled to some of the most noxious corporations in the world, including those that make their profits from fossil fuels and the occupation of Palestine. Under Slottow, U-M has doubled down on its connections to Wall Street and for all intents and purposes become a hedge fund.

The University of Michigan is no exception here—“public” universities all over the country are being increasingly structured to mimic for-profits. It is no surprise, then, that the CFO of a “public” university would have just the skills of profit maximization that a for-profit seeks. Tim Slottow is no stranger to increasing profit at the cost of providing a good, affordable education. For this reason, he is a great choice for the next president of the University of Phoenix, and we are confident that he will do a great job increasing the bottom line there.

Timothy P. Slottow is a leader in the higher education industry. He is the seventh president of the University of Phoenix, appointed in June 2014 by the institution's Board of Trustees after 16 years at the University of Michigan.

Slottow was appointed president of the University of Phoenix on June 20, 2014

Vote NO

And how long was Tim Slottow at UoPX?

Rewarding pieces of sh!t for destroying the company. Vote no on the buyout.

Just in case you missed the numbers: Greg Capelli--$7.3M, Sean Martin--$5.6M, J. Mitchell Bowling--$3.3M, Tim Slottow--$2.7M, Greg Iverson--$2.6M. P. 116 from..................................... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/929887/000119312516495780/d147071dprem14a.htm#toc147071_48