From the issue dated June 28, 2002
For-Profit, for Students
Keiser Colleges offers courses designed to lead to better
jobs
By ANNE MARIE BORREGO
Pembroke Pines, Fla.
Arthur E. Keiser knows that students don't come to his
colleges for the love
of learning or the modern
ALSO SEE:
facilities.
The Keiser Collegiate System
Arthur E. Keiser
"They're here because they
have a pain in their life, a
concern that they can't deal
with on their own," Mr.
Keiser said to a small group of admissions officers at the
newest Keiser Career Institute campus in this
stripmalled suburb between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
"They don't want their kids to grow up like they did."
Quite simply, his students need better jobs. And Mr.
Keiser tries to ensure that the 11 institutions in the
system give students what they are looking for. Because
the colleges aim not just to educate but also to prepare
students for jobs, they have a strict professional dress
code -- ties for men, professional slacks, skirts, or
dresses for women in nonmedical courses. And because
Mr. Keiser knows that the stakes are high for his
students, Keiser's colleges hold their instructors
accountable, requiring them to turn in a daily lesson plan
for administrators' review.
The Keiser system has flourished thanks to this
approach. The family business that started in 1977 in a
small storefront in Fort Lauderdale now comprises seven
Keiser College campuses, three Keiser Career Institute
locations, and Everglades College. All told, they took in
about $53-million in revenue last year.
Keiser is neither a mammoth publicly traded highereducation company nor one of the hundreds of singlecampus mom-and-pop proprietary schools that serve an
extremely narrow niche. Rather, it is among a small
group of medium-sized chains that are limiting their
growth in certain ways -- in Keiser's case, by choosing to
stay within Florida -- but aggressively pushing the
boundaries of for-profit higher education in others.
Keiser has done that by winning regional accreditation
from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools,
by preparing to offer bachelor's degrees in the fall, and
by becoming the first proprietary institution in Florida to
offer an associate degree in nursing.
A Modular System
Mr. Keiser's mother, Evelyn C. Keiser, still strolls in each
day at 5:45 a.m. to her first-floor office at the company's
headquarters in Fort Lauderdale. Listening to Beethoven
streaming over the Internet, she can well remember the
first student who came to the allied health college she
had opened with her son. Space was so limited that the
owners stored exam papers and slides for the overhead
projectors in their cars.
While the Keisers have moved up -- their corporate
headquarters occupies a six-floor building -- they have
clung to many of the core policies they developed then.
Because most of his students have other responsibilities
and come from lower-income environments, Mr. Keiser
contends that they don't learn the same way that
traditional college students do. So, the Keisers created a
modular system for their students, which entails taking
one monthlong, three-to-four-credit class at a time.
Depending on the degree, students spend from 12 to 25
hours in class each week.
"They don't have the ability to study four courses at a
time that are unrelated," Mr. Keiser says. This way, they
are immersed in smaller classes -- the average class
has about 15 students -- and the optional tutoring after
class. They also like the dress code.
"It gets the students prepared and sets the tone," says
Debbie T. Peart, a 20-year-old studying radiological
technology. Like all students in the medical- or dentalassisting programs, she wears scrubs to class. Different
programs wear different colors; hers are aqua.
For their money, Mr. Keiser says he tries to give his
students an education that will make them employable
when they graduate, which both Keiser's peers and
competitors say he does well.
"As far as I can tell from talking to the dean of our
undergraduate school, Keiser certainly does provide a
solid education for its students," says Ray Ferrero Jr.,
president of Nova Southeastern University, in Fort
Lauderdale, which since 1998 has had an agreement
that allows Keiser students to transfer there.
A Bell Curve for Instructors
Keiser provides that kind of quality, in part, by expecting
a lot of its instructors.
Gery Hochanadel, Keiser's vice president for academic
affairs, says the institution takes its time when hiring new
faculty members, making sure that they are not just
good instructors. "They need to take ownership of
students who don't come to class," he says. "They need
to want to call that student at night and go over whatever
he or she missed."
In addition to formal interviews, prospective instructors
must prepare classroom presentations. They must also
create daily lesson plans from a standardized syllabus
that Keiser develops in-house.
About 30 days before a class starts, all faculty members
turn in their lesson plans, which must be approved by
Mr. Hochanadel, individual deans, and campus directors
before instructors begin their next class.
"Instructors from the traditional sector aren't as excited
about the process," Mr. Hochanadel says. Neither were
longtime faculty members who were introduced to the
detailed lesson planning about three years ago. Newer
faculty members, on the other hand, especially those not
as accustomed to teaching, "love it," Mr. Hochanadel
adds.
"They're my lesson plans," says How S. Shows, a
veteran of community colleges and four-year institutions
who teaches a survey course on American literature that
often includes Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. "It's not like
there's some master plan that I'm making the lesson
plans from."
At the end of each modular period, every instructor is
evaluated, based on students' pre- and post-course test
scores. Mr. Hochanadel also factors in student surveys,
attendance records, and dean evaluations, and places
the resulting number on a bell curve. "Then we look at
our outliers," he says. Those who rise above the curve
are rewarded -- the top five instructors in each area of
study are treated to workshops, which the administration
uses to identify its high performers and their techniques.
And those who fall at the bottom of the curve, Mr.
Hochanadel says, have to improve, and if they don't,
they are dismissed.
Mr. Keiser expects his classes to be difficult and wants
to ratchet up the demands made on his students, though
he doesn't want them to fail. After-class tutoring is
encouraged, though Mr. Keiser says his institutions will
not admit students who cannot pass the admissions
exam.
Controlled Growth
Unlike his larger, publicly traded brethren, Mr. Keiser
has focused on trying to keep expansion at a reasonable
pace, growing at between 12 to 14 percent annually, to
avoid a loss of quality control. When the company posts
a profit, Mr. Keiser puts 40 percent back into the
institutions.
Mr. Keiser, however, can't keep all things under control.
At a weekly meeting of vice presidents here late last
month, he complained about excess spending. "Every
time we waste money, they pay for it," he said, referring
to students. While he was pleased that 19 unused
computers were being shipped from Keiser's Sarasota
campus to another one, he was clearly perturbed that
they were sitting idle in the first place.
"We'll be dead if we can't get waste under control," he
said. "We had 76 computers in inventory, and we're
going out and buying new ones?"
Cost is a competitive issue. Keiser's $10,000-a-year
tuition is more than twice that of nearby Broward
Community College. "It's a cheap state to go to school,"
Mr. Keiser says.
Analyzing costs has led Keiser to drop some of its
underperforming programs, like maritime hospitality to
train cruise ship staff, which never really took off, and
travel services, which took a significant hit with the
advent of Internet travel sites.
Keiser competes in a hot for-profit market. Between its
Florida Metropolitan Universities and National Schools of
Technology, Corinthian Colleges Inc. boasts 12
campuses in the state. The Apollo Group's University of
Phoenix has four campuses in Florida, and DeVry
University is opening up shop just one exit away from
Mr. Kei-ser's new Pembroke Pines location in South
Florida. The state has the fourth-highest proportion of
students attending for-profit institutions, with some
28,175 students, or about 4.3 percent, enrolled in
proprietary institutions in 1998, according to the
Education Commission of the States.
Mr. Keiser relishes the competition and looks to other
institutions for ideas, noting that he is excited about
DeVry's opening. "When we started our computer
program, they were my model."
He follows a "their success is my success" motto,
investing approximately $5,000 of company money into
each for-profit higher-education company when it goes
public. That strategy has paid off: The "school index" of
the shares he still holds has increased by 331 percent.
Individual vice presidents at Keiser each monitor a
publicly traded competitor, reporting on significant news
and new strategies.
Political Ties
Mr. Keiser and his wife, Belinda M. Keiser, are such
cheerleaders for the for-profit sector that they regularly
take their message to the halls of Congress and the
Florida statehouse. They and Mr. Keiser's mother have
collectively given more than $70,000 to lawmakers in
both houses of Congress and the Florida Legislature,
and to the Democratic National Committee, since 1999.
Mr. Keiser helped found the Career College
Association's political-action committee, and believes
that career colleges must work hard to introduce
themselves to policy makers, because most of them
attended traditional nonprofit institutions. "In some minds
we're stereotyped into something we're not," he says.
Mr. Keiser understands that the relationship between
government and the private sector is "a partnership,"
says Bruce D. Leftwich, the Career College
Association's vice president for government relations.
"When he goes to lobby, he believes, as a lot of us
believe, that you can't always go asking something. You
have to be able to say, 'I'm a resource to you,'" he says.
"And he invests a lot of capital to do that."
The Keisers' donations seem to have paid off. In 1998,
Belinda Keiser led the charge to admit for-profit
institutions into Florida's common course-numbering
system. The system, which was established in 1971,
created state-assigned numbers to general college
courses, to try to ease the process of transferring
credits. Comparable classes were assigned the same
number, so students could transfer from community
colleges to private colleges or public universities in the
state without having to retake similar courses.
Not being included in the system was "a real frustration
for me," says Ms. Keiser, whose foray into politics led to
a recent run for state representative, which was
unsuccessful. "We were SACS-accredited and our
students would go to Florida State and get bogged down
in the transfer-of-credit process," she says. Keiser
students' credits are now recognized.
Not every political fight has paid off, though. This year,
Keiser College, South College, and International Fine
Arts College, all regionally accredited, Florida-chartered
for-profit institutions, pushed for access to Florida's
Resident Access Grant, which provides up to $2,800 a
year to Florida residents who attend in-state private
colleges. Only those students attending colleges with
state charters, regional accreditation, and nonprofit
status can tap into the funds. Mr. Keiser believes the
tax-status stipulation is unfair, since all institutions
receiving the funds would have to pass muster with a
regional accreditor.
"Why should we be discriminated against because we
pay taxes?" he asks.
Florida's private colleges fought back. Nova
Southeastern's Mr. Ferrero says the grant was meant to
go to students who attend colleges and universities that
are most like those in the state system -- Floridachartered, nonprofit, degree-granting, and regionally
accredited. Mr. Ferrero says he would not take a
position on whether Keiser and other for-profits should
seek a grant program of their own.
"If they can convince the Legislature that that's important
for their students ... would I oppose it? No. I wouldn't
oppose it," he says.
State legislators eventually crafted a new bill that would
create such a grant program, which passed in the House
but failed in the Senate.
Ms. Keiser says their push for access to state money is
really about their students, not padding their coffers.
"The degrees our students pursue are in the highdemand work-force areas that Florida needs," she says.
"This would be a good investment in Florida."
THE KEISER COLLEGIATE SYSTEM
Founded: 1977 by Arthur E. Keiser and his mother, Evelyn C. Keiser
Institutions operated: Keiser College, Keiser Career Institute,
Everglades College
Locations (all in Florida)
Keiser College
Daytona Beach
Fort Lauderdale
Lakeland
Melbourne
Miami
Sarasota
Tallahassee
Keiser Career
Institute
Lake Worth
Pembroke Pines
Port Saint Lucie
Everglades College
Fort Lauderdale
Programs

Keiser College offers associate degrees in business, computer
technology, and allied health.

Everglades College offers bachelor's degrees in business
administration, information technology, e-commerce, aviation
management, and professional aviation.
Accreditation

Keiser College is accredited by the Southern Association of
Colleges and Schools.

Keiser Career Institute and Everglades College are accredited
by the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges
of Technology.
Total students: 4,300
Faculty: 288 instructors, 64 percent of them full time; 17 percent have
Ph.D.'s
Tuition: $5,000 for the equivalent of one semester 2001 revenue: $53million
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
Copyright © 2002 by The Chronicle of Higher Education