Adtalem Buys Walden from Laureate

After DeVry Education mushroomed into an international education conglomerate and renamed itself Adtalem Global Education in 2017, the company sold off its DeVry division to Cogswell Education in 2018 and its substantial tertiary holdings in Brazil to YDUQS in 2019.

But Adtalem, based in Chicago and listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ATGE, has returned to buying this month with the acquisition of Walden University, an online school enrolling 48,000 students, from Laureate Education, reported Inside Higher Ed.

While the for-profit tertiary sector in the United States has shrunk significantly over the past decade (because of fraud investigations spearheaded by the Obama administration concerning enrollment of underqualified applicants, inflation of student passing rates, and exaggeration of graduate employment data), Walden has weathered the storm.

Walden has one of the biggest virtual enrollments in the country, reported Inside Higher Ed: “Most of Walden's students are enrolled in graduate programs -- just 7,000 are undergrads. About a third of its students are in nursing programs, with its next biggest enrollments in education, management, and social work.”

According to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Laureate, based in Baltimore and listed on NASDAQ under the ticker LAUR, agreed to sell Walden to Adtalem for $1.48 billion. The filing, published on September 11, reported $591 million in revenue for the 12-month period ending in June and $147 million in operating income.

Adtalem declared in a statement published by Business Wire that the acquisition of Walden will significantly fortify its presence in healthcare education. The company already comprises American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, Chamberlain University, Ross University School of Medicine, and Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine. In sum, the company will have 26 campuses spanning 15 states and four countries with more than 90,000 students.