Ms. Gubins: I cover primarily the postsecondary education companies as well as one company that focuses more on the K-12 area. The majority of what's publicly traded in the education sector focuses on postsecondary.
TWST: I understand the recession has been positive for postsecondary companies.
Would you talk about how long the industry can sustain the level of growth that
we've been seeing, and what growth may look like, say, in 18 months?
Ms. Gubins: I don't think anybody would expect them to be able to sustain the
levels of growth that we've been seeing recently over a longer period of time,
including the companies themselves. They've been benefiting, I think, both from
improving operations and also from the weakening economy, and comparisons become
more difficult over time. And so even if they kept up in some ways that level of
growth, you still wouldn't see it in the percentage growth rates. So I would
expect that to slow down over time. It's tough to say in 18 months what it looks
like. From a longer-term perspective, I would argue that mid- to high single-
digit on-ground enrollment growth is reasonable to expect. The online market is
growing somewhere in the high teens to 20% range. So I would expect a higher
growth rate from companies that are more focused on online. I do think growth
will depend to some extent on how the labor market plays out, but we
theoretically could see higher growth rates than single digits at least for the
next year or so.
Tickers included in this excerpt: APOL, LOPE
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