Clarification of Answer by
guillermo-ga
on
19 Jun 2002 00:27 PDT
Dear Uc1bear,
Working as a consultant for educational institutions in my country, I
have some familiarity about the American Education System, not being
an expert, though. That’s why I took your question, and I must confess
that I felt surprised and concerned for having missed the point so
badly in my first try, so I think I owe you an explanation.
I based my first research on the words “secondary”, “education”,
“schools” in several combinations with the words “management”,
“administration”, and others around the same concept, what led me to
the lists I offered you. I didn’t take as a mistake the fact that most
of them were K12 schools, because what is called “secondary education”
is comprised within grades 7 or 8 to 12, as you can see at the page
“United States of America - Education System” (
http://www.usc.edu/dept/education/globaled/wwcu/background/United-States.htm
).
Besides that, I did not consider a problem that your sample companies
weren’t in the list, since you had said that it “would probably
include” them. I had thought they were just samples for the
researcher’s orientation, other than a particular interest of you.
I think these two facts caused the misunderstanding, and my mistake
was not to include your samples as searching criteria. So I did this
second time.
My search strategy, using Google Answers Advance Search, was to look
forward the combination of the phrase “secondary education” with the
names of the companies you quoted as samples. Following that strategy,
eventually I came across the Forbes list of Companies in School
Industry ( http://www.forbes.com/finance/mktguideapps/compinfo/CompaniesByIndustry.jhtml?ind=SCHOOL&orderby=price&sortorder=asc&fullind=Schools
), containing thirty three companies, eight of them belonging to
either of the outstanding companies Forbes list --among them the ones
you mentioned as samples --what could be a criteria to identify the
“major” ones. All these companies --or most of them-- focus on what’s
called “post-secondary” or “higher” education.
By clicking on the company name, you get linked to a company profile
that includes a Background --containing summary information such us
company focus and number of schools or campuses-- and, on the right
side of the page, under the title Company Data, the address, telephone
number, email address if available. Below, there’s a list of the
company Officers. In order to identify the marketing officer, I
suggest you click on the phrase “More executives …” at the end of the
list, to find a table with the name and title of each officer.
There’s, I think, one point left, that is the marketing / advertising
budget. It doesn’t seem to be among the financial information at
Forbes. Hence, looking for 10-k, as you suggested, I found the “Quick
forms lookup” page at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (
http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/formpick.htm ), where you can
enter the company name and select the form type, and you can get it if
available.
Although searching further on this would imply a time effort that I
can’t consider under the current offer, I did three sample searches:
Strayer Education, Inc. did not show up. For Apollo Group, Inc. and
DeVry, Inc. the 10-k form was available, but it didn’t seem to have
the marketing or advertising budget as disaggregated information. I
wish you had better luck with the others.
I hope to have overturned your initial disappointment.
I want to apologize once more for the misunderstanding, and thank you
for a question that made me learn so much!
Best regards!
Guillermo
