Thread regarding Dream Center Education Holdings, LLC (DCEH) layoffs

This guys are supposed to be a CHRISTIAN SCHOOL based program. Laying off hunfreds of great employees because they didn't know diddly about running culinary school or to that matter anything. Some of these employees worked for OVER 25 years for Aii and got NOTHING ZERO ZULCH from DCEH....these guys are a fraud and SHAME ON AII International for not taking into consideration the lives of those that were at the mercy of DECH........20 years no severance.........b--tards

Any word on the Las Vegas campus closing. Students have mentioned the VA telling them the school will be closing and students have not been receiving their aid. I have heard the school will close as early as March 2019. Anyone know anything?

i attend the schaumburg Ai and im completely bewildered by this situation, i go an alert on my phone about the closing of my school is three days ago and i start classes next week this is very unprofessional! there are meetings taking place next week as well to talk about options of what to do as far as education goes but this smells fishy...

im trying to research why schools are closing but no info is sticking to my curiosity of "why"...

do know the previous owner of Ai filed for bankruptcy but thats all.. if anyone can give insight please reply

Dear Student from Schaumburg

Online is your only option if you want a degree. AiO is accredited and your degree will have value (depending on the quality of your portfolio).

AiO will probably close December 2018, be sure to complete everything before the new year.

At least transferring to AiO, your previous credits will be accepted.

You are mistaken though, Ai is not an art school, all majors are design based. You can learn design online.

@TTtbhHk-7ymc Hate to break it to you Chicago is not an option and you last academic years has been a waste because Schaumburg or Chicago is accredited meaning you are not getting credit for them, jobs may not recognize the classes, schools are not going to accept them. You pretty much have wasted a lot of money and the school committed fraud because they continue to not inform you so that you can make an educated decision!

I'm a student at AI Schaumburg.

Two days ago, students received an email that basically said that our "host of options" were A:Finish your programs and graduate before December, B:Finish the rest of your college online, C:Go to another Art Institute location, or D:Finish college with a non-DCEH partner institution that they are working with.

OPTIONS THAT ARE REALLY AVAILABLE TO ME:

A: I can't graduate before december.

So option A is out.

B: The classes I need to take are not offered online. (Art School: You learn mostly by doing things, not watching a video of someone else doing them for you.)

So option B is out.

C: The closest other location is in Chicago. I don't have a car I can drive so I would be taking a bus, then a train, then walk. Commute will be anywhere between 4-6 hours a day. By the time I would get there and have finished my classes for the day, it would probably be night. Walking + train + bus at night in downtown Chicago. Theres a reason why people who live in Chicago came to schools outside Chicago. It just isn't very safe anymore. I wouldn't feel safe taking a trip like that into Chicago.

LAST RESORT!!! (SAFETY CONCERN)

D: Go to another school. Before I attended college, I looked at every school in the area and looked into their programs. None of the other schools in the area had what I wanted, thats why I chose the Art Institute in the first place. They had exactly what I wanted at a tuition I could afford. If I went to one of the non-DCEH partner institutions, my tuition might be higher, not all my credits may be transferable (that adds up to a lot of wasted time/money), I probably wouldn't graduate when I was supposed to, and (MOST IMPORTANTLY) they may not even have my program. Theres nearly no point in getting a degree in something I don't even want to be doing.

MAYBE. IF THEY HAVE MY MAJOR.

These options don't seem very favorable to me. IF a partner institution happens to have my major then I guess I will go there by default. If not, then it looks like I'll either have to take a chance on Chicago (despite my concerns about safety) or drop out.

Every other student is in the same position. Go wherever they find a place for us or head to Chicago. And I know for a fact that no one wants to go to Chicago right now. There are even a couple people who go to school at AI Schaumburg who lived in Chicago but didn't want to go to school there so they came to Schaumburg instead.

STUDENT HOUSING: I don't even know what is happening to everyone in student housing but I can only imagine that they're packing their bags and looking for somewhere else to live. From what I understand, housing is being closed down around the same time the school is.

STUDENT WORKERS: There are student workers at the school whose only income is from the school. Now they have to find other jobs fast. Some of the student workers had gotten jobs at the school to help pay tuition. I also know of two students who work at the school who have started LLCs and were relying on that income they were getting for the initial expenses of getting their companies off the ground. Now they suddenly don't have that anymore because they will all lose their jobs at anytime between now and December.

This happened very suddenly too. No one even expected it until we got that email. No one saw it coming, it was a complete blindside. We knew ownership of the school had changed but all we ever heard was that they planned on keeping things that same. We were changing to a not for profit school but things would be the same for everyone who was already there.

So much for that. Way to pull the rug out from under everyone DCEH.

This thread was the first one to reveal the closures - a few days before anyone talked about it

With regards to severance, I read in earlier comments that it was 1week of pay per year employed which would be in line with what people got when they took voluntary retirement last year. I'm also very interested in if corporate will include health insurance in the package. So if anyone knows for sure we're all dying to know.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no but, has anyone who has been immediately laid off received any sort of severance package?

Is AiWashington closing

Doesn’t matter what position... entire school is closed. Nothing about severance yet but we will see. No official talk yet but waiting on it.

@TTtbhHk-1htj... what position did you hold? Did they speak of severance?

Durham is done. Grabbing my s—� now and waiting to be walked out by security today. Cancelled all appointments.

K, but it's actually Durham, and the Admissions office is all but packed at this point.

I’m talking to someone in Raleigh and they are saying they haven’t heard anything.

@TTtbhHk-1hmm Any word on Fort Lauderdale?

If Miami's out, then Tampa (a branch campus of Miami) is surely out. But no word on FLL to answer all the campuses in Florida.

@TTtbhHk-1hmm when will off-campus staff/ faculty be informed?

Closing August 28th at latest

Any of these confirmations coming with dates? When are the schools closing? Dec 2018?

Campus president just confirmed here in Durham and also Charlotte and Miami is closing.

@ @TTtbhHk-1dbl... only when Inhabe to break bad news to employees Inpost so early. The news will not hit until 7 am PST but need to practice my speech.

Do you regularly post at 4 in the morning?

I’m an employee at an AI in California and the postings about school closures are true. Back in January, our SDOA explained to us that July is crucial for us. We want to be standing with flying colors so DCEH can look towards us. SDOA saying this day in and day out was an indication that DCEH were only keeping schools that were performing. It’s sad but true. Keep it clean when the news comes out and it was nice working with everyone. We are one of the schools that are safe but certain employees WILL be let go from the schools that are staying open.

I thought Title IV funds were approved per school, not on a company wide basis... so if one school closes a program or closes entirely without a teachout, title IV funds are not available for students at that one school only.

But if DCEH says we're shutting our doors to 20 campuses, it doesn't affect the other 11.

I may be wrong about that but I thought it was all factored in locally. I believe the 90/10 rule is determined per campus, not company wide.

How would dceh expect to keep its title 4 if it doesn’t offer teachouts?

Well WARN is a federal labor law with some states having stricter state requirements. BUT.. at least on a federal level there's one way to get around that:

Faltering company: When, before a plant closing, a company is actively seeking capital or business and reasonably, in good faith, believes that advance notice would preclude its ability to obtain such capital or business, and this new capital or business would allow the employer to avoid or postpone the shutdown for a reasonable period;

It will be easy for them to argue that they couldn't announce because they were actively trying to right the ship after acquisition and attract new students but simply failed to do so.

Why is it around this time every year someone has to stir up the pot? I’ll give $100,000 to any Top Exec. that knows for sure to provide us with an email or conversation that talks about closures.

I wonder if States without "WARN ACT" will term non essential staff right away tomorrow.

Admissions, Faculty, Student Workers ???

North Carolina

South Carolina

Pennsylvania

Oregon

Arizona

Florida

Tennessee

Colorado

Indiana

Virginia

This rumor is 100% true. It will be confirmed tomorrow.

If there's only 9-11 campuses left, there's likely no need for a centralized location for Ai schools . DCEH could easily move things over to LA where Dream Center is headquartered.

Ai was always the outlier in the whole EDMC purchase. An arts school where most students end up as their own business as freelancers isn't the vocational training that Dream Center seemed to be aiming towards. The nursing programs, the medical technician programs... those fit much closer. EDMC just made sure that if DCEH wanted South and Argosy, they had to take Ai as well.

I wonder what happens to employees in Phoenix centralized center??

Any information regarding what will happen to students? Teach outs? No teach outs? This is horrible.

@ ixl Because one hand clearly doesn't talk to the other. That's not surprising at all.

Earlier this week, I was sent mass emails requiring even more meetings than originally planned for next week... yet no one has personally contacted me to tell me what I already see in the system- my classes were cut and I no longer have a job.

“dumb--ses, all the campuses listed are going to training for the new CRM in July so why would they close”

Business as usual, thy did not want show hand. At our campus they just converted from cars to campus nexus, why do dat if we gonna close?

@dsw did it hurt when you pulled that list out of your a**?

dumb--ses, all the campuses listed are going to training for the new CRM in July so why would they close?

@dsw sources? Without sources and ancillary detail this is just a troll post

Does anyone have the list?

We have a lot of people out of the office this week as well. Very interesting

Master page and discussion forum for the Arts Institutes is here:

&the-art-institutes

or go via this address:

www.TheLayoff.com/the-art-institutes

post it please.