Short courses offer hope to U.S. education for-profit companies - ABINAYA VIJAYARAGHAVAN, Reuters

Short-term courses could well be the way forward for traditional for-profit education providers in the United States as they struggle to arrest the slide in enrollments. Larger for-profit education companies, including Apollo Education Group Inc and ITT Educational Services Inc, have seen their enrollments dwindle in the face of increased regulatory scrutiny for issues including student loans, poor placements and low graduation rates. For-profit education providers should increase focus on shorter online courses to attract students, said Kevin Kinser, associate professor at the University of Albany, State University of New York. "It would help the for-profit education providers to diversify the way they are gaining revenue from educational products," he said. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/13/us-education-competition-idUSKBN0KM23I20150113