After Another Poor Quarter, University of Phoenix Cuts Programs (But Adds Bootcamps)

DEATH AND REBIRTH: Apollo Education Group is making drastic cuts after another poor showing for the University of Phoenix. Net revenue for Q3 2015 decreased $112.5 million, and student enrollment fell from nearly 242,000 to 206,900. (Here are the Q3 results.)

During the earnings call, Apollo Education Group CEO Greg Cappelli says he will slash many associate degree programs along with "proprietary and legacy IT systems," which blogger Phil Hill says refers to the company's earlier investment of "hundreds of millions of dollars...on a new, adaptive-learning LMS." (Apollo's $75 million purchase of Carnegie Learning in 2011 was supposedly part of this effort.)

Cappelli briefly elaborates:

While Apollo was among the first to design an online classroom and supporting system, in today's world it's simply not as efficient to continue to support complicated, custom-designed systems particularly with the newer quality systems we have more recently found with of the self providers that now exist within the marketplace.

Despite the cuts, Apollo Education Group is continuing to invest in other technologies. In June, it acquired Iron Yard, a coding bootcamp which will soon have 20 campuses in the US and London. More insights on Apollo's upcoming changes from The Chronicle of Higher Education.