“(The) decline and program-specific issues we talked about so much over the past year were masking this broader trend of the mainstreaming of online education,” 2U CEO Chip Paucek told analysts. “In 2008, there were very few high-quality online options. As we’ve grown the business since then, new online options for students have expanded significantly. Today, most schools are going online in some form.”
Slowing graduate program launches will help 2U make “operational improvement” that should improve its cash position, Paucek said. “What we’re doing today is reorienting our spend and our operation off of what is a smaller expected steady-state enrollment,” he said.
