Paul Ginocchio, Deutsche Bank
Great. Finally, I would like to ask about Apollo Global, particularly Brazil. It looks like the Brazilian government changed the payment patterns. I think they did it overnight. Are you aware of that? Was that factored into your valuation when you looked at it?Just may be explainwhat happened if you are…
Brian Swartz, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Yeah, Paul, despite any near-term changes in Brazil, we’ve been looking at this market for years. This was a very small amount of capital that we put into the market into a very high quality team that has developed a great platform and has access through a delivery model that we’re very interested in. It’s asset light that we think is going to help modernize the Brazilian system going forward in terms of higher education. Yes, we did factor in pretty much everything that we looked at in terms of diligence going into Brazil. Obviously, this is a small acquisition to put us on the map in Brazil right now.
Paul Ginocchio, Deutsche Bank
Thank you.
Brian Swartz, SVP and Chief Financial Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from the line of Sara Gubins with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Your line is open.
Sara Gubins, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks. Good morning. First, do you think that any of the disruption is related to moving to the new college model or is it really all related to the new learning management system?
Greg Cappelli, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Well, Sara, I think there is some related to that, but we have pretty specific data to show the time lines. We have information from our technical assistance center, right?When thing spiked up, what that information was about why there was frustration. Yeah, of course, we had expected some from moving to a new college operating model. We think that’s the right thing to do for the long term and are excited about that from the competitive standpoint. The quality of what I’m seeing there is very substantially improved and exciting. The majority of this disruption, we feel very confident is from the explanation of the classroom.
Sara Gubins, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Okay. Then last quarter you mentioned that you saw the macro environment was getting slowly better for University of Phoenix, it may be difficult to tease out given the internal issues right now, but I’m wondering if you’ve got any updated views on that?
Greg Cappelli, Chief Executive Officer, Apollo Education Group, Inc.
Yeah. Look, I think it is, I mean, I think it’s hard to say week-to-week what’s happening with the external environment. As I said in my earlier comments, it’s still choppy in the external environment. I think that’s to be expected in our industry right now. Obviously, there are signs in the economies, there’s areas that are improving. I would say there are some areas that are better and some areas we’re still waiting for. It also varies by program and courses.
We have some areas that I’m not going to go into a lot of detail on that are doing better than others as we continue to modernize. I’d say, in general, we’ve had a period where intakes have been improving, but obviously it’s an industry that continues to evolve and that’s why we think it is so important to be able to differentiate and to be able to listen and learn from our partners that are employing our graduates to develop and deliver exactly what they need to hire our graduates so that we stand out. We can sign important agreements like the ones I spoke to earlier in my more formal remarks. Because that’s what’s going to help organizations like ours drive through any kind of environment.
If you’re connecting thousands and thousands of people from education to careers where there is huge demand, I think you’re going to have a very competitive offering and have the ability to stand out in this industry even when there is some noise like there is now.
