Thread regarding University of Phoenix layoffs

Yes, we would all be happier elsewhere - but finding and landing that elsewhere job is proving to be difficult at best - especially for the older employees who worked at UoP for awhile and actually have a degree from UoP. I began looking for another job 4 months before I was laid off, and to date I have applied for 72 positions, have had only 3 interviews, and received rejections on all. Age discrimination? Maybe on some. Bias against UoP? - Most likely, as I witnessed snarky and discriminating questions about UoP during the interviews. Not having time to keep up with the latest tech trends as an FTF? Oh my word, yes... definitely an issue. The economy not as good as everyone thinks? Yes - the employment rate going down doesn't always mean jobs are on the rise, it also means there are thousands upon thousands who have run out of unemployment and/or given up on finding a job. Like many of you, there were some good reasons to stay with UoP, especially during the days when integrity and compassion were priorities and students were the focus. I enjoyed teaching with UoP very much and miss those golden days. It is sad to see the direction UoP is going - sad for students and sad for current and former employees. Finding insurance is the least of the problems for those who were laid off. Yes, most of us were given about 2 weeks (some longer)... but scrambling for another job, filing for unemployment, adjusting your family budget, trying to avoid the anxiety/depression that comes with all this... all takes a front seat. Finding insurance, or even being able to afford it, is worrisome, but is forced to the back burner during such times, unfortunately. Another difficult task is trying to smile at all the idiotic cliches people throw your way because they do not know what to say to someone who has lost their job. "Hang in there," "better jobs will come your way," "you will land on your feet," and more... ugh... it would be better to just say "I am sorry to hear you lost your job. Let me know if I can help"... and mean it! What the unemployed needs more than anything are connections, resources, referrals, etc... not cliches and good intentions.

The irony is that University of Phoenix has been propped up by so-called liberals, from Nancy Pelosi to friends of President Obama. They have also profited from their relationships with groups like the Thurgood Marshall Fund and HBCUs as well as people of color, from Shaq to Larry Fitzgerald.

But underneath (or in the back stage) UoPX has been a long history of mysogyny and racism.

Hahahahaha lol

Camden, when you say fraudulent do you mean like pretending to be American Indian when you are actually white?????

Elizabeth Warren is looking for whistleblowers. If you know of anything fraudulent going on between UoPX and the Department of Education, say something.

https://www.warren.senate.gov/devoswatch/

I agree with Boo hoo! I tired to stay with the company and ride this out. When people inside the organization start turning on each other it's time to go. The morale is horrible and what's sad your so use it while working there it feels normal. Moving to a new company it's exciting and liberating when you suggest a solution and they don't shoot you down like your pond scum. The cloud that hangs over you, the whispers of the next negative gossip to be spread ab9ut what the University is doing to screw you is gone. My fear is what the new owners will do after next February. The grass is greener I promise. The economy is doing well and the good talent will leave. They treat you bad so you will leave, there is no work life balance at this company. Wake up they will abusive you as long as you are letting them. The sad thing is, I actually loved my job and what I Did. I could no longer go to work everyday in that atmosphere.

to Boo-hoo..................sour grapes? Maybe? But it was not always this bad. There was a time when UOP had a semblance of honor, credibility, effective management, and actually was dedicated to supporting adult learners. I stayed because I was making a contribution..........teaching and helping students fulfill important goals. Also, they paid me well (but on the low end of the spectrum of comparable organizations), I liked my co-workers, had a fabulous team I had assembled and worked with, had an exceptional immediate supervisor, and kept hoping change was near, especially after Slottow took over and we started focusing on mission and vision and eliminated referring to ourselves as a company and degrees as products. Slottow provided a glimmer of hope. The last five years though have witnessed a steady decline in both enrollment and the culture. How can anyone who has been here more than a few years fail to recognize and criticize management that has destroyed UOP's reputation, cut thousands of jobs, eliminated 60% of its campuses, lost 530,000 students, and presided over the plummeting of its stock price from $90 to $10???? This is about as bad as it gets. How can anyone with an ounce of perspicacity about market and organizational success or effectiveness not hold management accountable for such drastic failure???? This isn't speaking poorly; this is offering a critical analysis; and by critical I mean the product of critical thinking. Every Fortune 500 company I am aware of would have fired the CEO, president, and other executives after five or six consecutive quarters of poor financial performance; let alone the six years Capelli has been allowed to remain in his position. I thought of leaving numerous times and have applied for many jobs before this latest purge. I turned down a few because my situation was tolerable and I failed to secure a few I should have been offered perhaps because of my UOP affiliation. I had been impacted by poor executive management. How? My morale was compromised, productivity reduced, and even the culture I worked in was fearful of the ax and most were looking for jobs or contemplating leaving. My campus has spent the last couple of years looking over its shoulder waiting for the next layoff. In the interim most of our good people left. Yet, boo-hoo, good people do remain in bad situations hoping they will improve, doing what they can to succeed at their level and push reform, as well as focusing on mission and vision, appreciating amenities they have, but being mindful that the ship is sinking and the captain is incompetent and prepared to jump overboard as soon as feasible. My only regret is that I didn't jump in time. I will never work for another for-profit education institution, and I have worked for many of them including Capella, AIU, CTU, Walden, and Grand Canyon. They generally feature the same types of cultures and management; however UOP is in a class with such for-profits as Corinthian (Everest), ITT, and Heald; all of whom have performed as poorly as UOP - and they are now all closed. As one critic of UOP said, "The kind of person who’s now looking at this institution is not the savviest consumer or prospective student." Why would anyone want to enroll here or continue to work here? I can think of a reason most dean or director level and above are still here and that is compensation. They will be hard pressed to duplicate their six figure salaries elsewhere, so they hang on tight, get by, don't rock the boat, don't question policy and decisions, and hope they can navigate through this mess until they can find something comparable or retire.

@NthKxDM-1ktg said it spot on. This company does not care about it's students or it's employees. I had a manager that treated me like sh-- she was essentially abusive. I went to HR and they did nothing. They don't care that morale is in the tank. That don't care how loyal you are to the company or the students. I left during a voluntary layoff and I am so glad I did.

Booo-hoooo.... if you spent 20 years of your life there then you might want to speak a bit higher of the place rather than bash it since it's a chunk of your resume. I get it... we are going to be downsizing so any day now we might be let go. That means it's time to decide if you want to ride it out or be proactive about finding another place to work. I'm sure my time will come too but I won't speak poorly of the school. I wouldn't have spent so much time there if it actually s---ed so bad. Neither would any of you.

can contractors be cut too?

1ktg- very well stated. Tenured HR personnel were also let go in the last 18 months eliminating any empathy and, it appears, any training as many appear to have been from finance, or academics. In other departments we are seeing tenured employees being eliminated first - surprisingly (or not!!) currently it is mostly women. The university appears to be becoming more predominantly male.

I have been here 20 years. They do not differentiate between someone who has been here 2 months or 20 years. My position was eliminated; however I am far from alone. Anyone who was "in process" with the Faculty Alignment restructure was eliminated. Most were not replaced, but the position purged. This seems to have effected well over 100 mid-level AA personnel and most at campuses. I was at an "investment" campus. Investment so far has meant staff reductions, hiring freezes, and remodel reductions. I am a doctorate but can't see how such an approach constitutes investment. It looks like this is the end of the beginning of phasing out all smaller market campuses. And why wouldn't it be? You can't continue as usual when enrollment continues to plummet. Pistol Pete was brought in to finish the job that Tiny Tim could not seem to consummate. We have to give him credit (Tim that is): it seems he does have a heart and there is a compassionate bent to him. Pistol Pete's first move is to freeze hiring and terminate all in-process hires. This does not bode favorably for investment. So many factors have contributed to the Phoenix demise. Chief among them is horrible leadership. This is mainly directed at Capelli but I don't exclude Phoenix either. It was a grand experiment that produced a Frankenstein. Thankfully I have no UOP degrees. They will mean far less in the future. How can a university have any integrity, credibility, or standing when its provost has a terminal degree from Argosy and its two last president's lacked terminal degrees and the current one has a mere bachelor's degree. Does this say UOP values education???? Hardly. We are a business and always will be one; academics have always been second or third. Tiny Tim tried to change the vernacular, but alas we still call our degrees products and our institution as "the company." As Mr T use to say: "pity the fool." I do pity all those fools who remain. They are now mere fodder for Pistol Pete's aim. And his aim is going to be deadly accurate. And it really has to be. The UOP infrastructure grew to accommodate some 650,000 students. It takes a lot of cuts to bring it into some kind of equivalence with enrollments that are now plummeting below 120,000 students. Yes, there will be more cuts because there will be more decline. What intelligent, capable, committed, and aspiring student would enroll at UOP when there are so many, many more better choices? What is UOP's differentiation? A million alumni? The School of Business focus on the hospitality industry? Why would any prospective student who has a choice, choose UOP? The answer is they would not! It is so sad to see how the Board and one executive after another have squandered the model and tarnished the brand to such an extent that only a miracle would enable it to "rise" like its namesake. I am afraid the "We rise" campaign and new slogan is a complete fiction and mirage. My fear is that our image is so tarnished that anyone who has worked here for very long will suffer from it in the job market. I hope it is not true but i have already run into it. Perhaps many will realize that those who actually supported operations and implemented strategy had zero influence or say in policy. If ever there was a centralized organization that ignored its far flung satellites and had no interest in anything emanating from anywhere but Phoenix, it is UOP. Add incestuousness and avarice to the equation and it is easy to see how and why Phoenix has failed. In my 20 years here I have witnessed just how alive and destructive the Peter Principle is. Numerous mid to higher level managers whose academic credentials were earned only at UOP were elevated into strategic positions without any regard to the demands of the next level or the competency required. This approach has institutionalized mediocrity and insulated UOP from any meaningful innovation and reform. This will provide fodder for future case studies. Another indictment worthy of mention is very unfriendly HR policies and inept HR management (if one can call it that). Most of my colleagues here and at other institutions firmly believe an academic institution must be called to a higher standard than a mere business - that it should practice what it teaches. Then again UOP is a business masquerading as a university and acting very much like most for-profit businesses do: a focus on the bottom line, and it isn't the triple bottom line either. I was treated like other folks in my position; with a conspicuous absence of empathy, regard, appreciation, or recognition for our contributions, expertise, and loyalty. We were mere cogs in the machine and little more than numbers on a spreadsheet. How sad that an organization proclaiming to be an institution of higher learning would behave in such a "low" manner where its policies and actions could not be discerned from its bottom-line corporate brethren. The only possible positive outcome here is forcing the remaining good people to leave and liberate them from this hostile, unfriendly, uncaring, and strategically bankrupt organization and by doing so give them a chance to land with a "real" university or progressive company. President Trump alleges that the media is comprised of nothing but "fake news." Taking a page out of his notebook, I will proclaim that I know now, it is time for me to say goodbye to this "fake" university.

I am sorry. You deserve better - - we all did.

Nope, insurance is cut at midnight.

Hopefully they gave you more than a week to find insurance. These aren't good people. You will be happier elsewhere.