Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 7)

SM: How do you handle your regulatory relationships?

MC: We have to manage our regulatory relationships very carefully. That is one area where we can lose all of our money. >>>

Deal Radar 2009: Elements Akademia

The education market in India was recently estimated at $30 billion, with an ‘employability training’ segment pegged at about $1 billion. Today’s Deal Radar company aims to emerge as one of the top providers in this segment and capture a 7%–8% market share. Elements Akademia runs India’s first chain of finishing schools aimed at bridging the gap between academic theory and industry requirements and thus make graduates more employable. Students are taught ‘the nine employability skills’, which include attitude, business communication and spoken English, personal grooming and presentation skills, customer service, behavioral skills, basic IT, an overview of the service sectors, corporate awareness and ethics. z

Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 6)

SM: It sounds as though the best way to get into the online school business is to buy a struggling school that already has accreditation. Is that an accurate statement?

MC: Correct. There are only 3,000 regionally accredited schools and most are called Stanford, Harvard, Yale, University of Michigan, etc. It is very rare to find a regionally accredited school. >>>

Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 5)

SM: Who do you consider to be potential acquirers of your schools?

MC: Bridgepoint, Grand Canyon, DeVry, Apollo, ITT, Strayer, Touro, EDMC, Capella, and APEI. I believe that most of the big public companies are looking for acquisitions. >>>

BusinessWeek On Innovation And Job Creation

BusinessWeek has an excellent article on basic research and innovation: Where Have You Gone, Bell Labs? that covers how basic research can repair the broken U.S. business model and create millions of jobs. >>>

Catching Up On Readings: Being Your Own Boss

Guest author Erika Valdez describes how sweet it is in her series on mompreneurs. Click on the full article for the rest of this week’s posts. >>>

Mompreneur Stories: Being Your Own Boss

By Guest Author Erika Valdez

There are over 10 million women-owned businesses in the United States, a large percentage of which are owned by mompreneurs. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, women are establishing their own companies at twice the rate of men. What is the reason for this trend? >>>

Latent Solutions to Water Scarcity in India

By Guest Author Rohit P. Singh

Water, the fundamental necessity of every extant species on earth, is becoming a source of danger in many parts of the world today. According to a survey by the World Health Organisation (WHO), unsafe drinking water kills more than 1.5 million children per year. More than 1.1 billion people today lack access to clean water, and 2.6 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. >>>