This is all over the traditional media now...
Hundreds of employees at Education Management Corp. in Pittsburgh are losing their jobs as the struggling Downtown company adjusts to enrollment declines at its for-profit colleges.
The cuts will affect less than 3 percent of the company's workforce, EDMC spokesman Bob Greenlee said Thursday. Most of the cuts — about 200 employees — will be at the Art Institute online division in Pittsburgh and in Phoenix. Some support staff at the company's headquarters also will lose their jobs.
“As part of our efforts to offer students a great learning experience while keeping education affordable, we must maintain close alignment between our resources and market demand,” said Bob Greenlee, an EDMC spokesman, in a statement. “As such, we had to make the difficult decision to eliminate less than 3 percent of our workforce. These reductions are mostly in staff and support functions.”
Greenlee declined to say exactly how many people were laid off or provide enrollment figures. The company had 17,400 employees as of November 2015, Greenlee said.
Including the cuts announced Wednesday, the company has slashed at least 700 jobs since last June as it adjusts to falling demand from students. Enrollment at its four college brands — the Art Institutes, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University — declined 29 percent between 2010 and 2014, according to regulatory filings.
Thursday's layoffs come as EDMC has moved to close 18 Art Institute campuses over the next few years. The Pittsburgh Art Institute campus has not been slated for closure.
The for-profit college industry has struggled amid declining enrollments and tightened oversight. Regulators have investigated the industry's recruiting practices and accused the companies of saddling students with debt without training them for jobs that would allow them to pay it back.
EDMC underwent massive change last year as it came under new owners, replaced its top executives and settled an eight-year-long federal whistle-blower lawsuit last November, which accused the company of paying recruiters according to the number of students they enrolled, a violation of federal law.
So far, EDMC has avoided the fate of its defunct competitor, Corinthian Colleges Inc., which filed for bankruptcy last year after closing its remaining 28 career schools.
Chris Fleisher is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-320-7854 or cfleisher@tribweb.com.