Trace Urdan, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Okay. Fair enough. Then in terms of the new classroom issues just so I understand this clearly. The drop in RPS is reflecting students scaling back on their course load. I guess I gather also reflecting some students dropping out altogether. Is it having any kind of an impact on new student starts, from your perspective?
Greg Cappelli, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
It’s hard to say exactly if it’s had any impact on new students. You’re talking about the classroom issue. Most of the impact, Trace, we believe, has come with the existing students who are actually pretty well under their courses.
Brian Swartz, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Yeah. In some cases several classes or even a year plus into their course and their studies, Trace.
Trace Urdan, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Okay. Fair enough. Then, I wondered if… You made some reference to goals of… the work that you’re doing in terms of employment outcomes and how important that is to the future of the business and sort of your strategy going forward. Now we’ve got gainful employment that is sort of coming on to the books. Have you taken any steps to improve your own kind of proprietary measures of job placement and starting salary and can you speak to that a little bit. I know that it’s not a requirement of your accreditation, but I’m wondering if you are looking to try to get better data as far as those numbers are concerned?
Greg Cappelli, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
That’s a great question, Trace, and I’ll tell you that first of all, we worked very hard to put ourselves in a good position on gainful employment. We’ve had our own gainful employment system built in. At the University of Phoenix, we’ve tried to ensure that there is complete and total transparency on the front end, that students understand the cost, where the jobs are, how much their paycheck is going to come out. In those specific jobs that they can choose a course and a program that feels right for them in terms of percentages that they’re going to have to use their beginning paychecks to pay back those loans. That’s very important to us on the front end.
The other statistics that you bring up, yeah, you’re right, there’s not requirements, but we’ve been pretty transparent in saying that whether there’s the University of Phoenix or there are institutions around the globe that we run and operate, it is critical for us to make sure that we are building to a future that takes the appropriate levels of education whether they’re degree or non-degree or both in some cases. Make sure it’s delivered in a modernized fashion and make sure that employers have been brought into the process, right, in the development of that content and those programs because they are frustrated with the college system here and abroad.
They feel like nobody is listening to them. We are listening to them, and if we deliver on that and we make sure that we can demonstrate outcomes not just you’re finished with the program or you’ve graduated, but you have the skills, you have gained the skills necessary to do these jobs in a career that you want, that is what they’re looking for. We know that there’s a skills gap of millions of millions of people here and even larger in many international countries. We connect those two together which we are determined to do. That’s where I think the future of this sector is going. That’s what we’ve been working so hard to invest in and to deliver on.
Trace Urdan, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Okay. Thanks, Greg.
Greg Cappelli, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Thank you.
