Concorde Career Colleges – profitable with enrollment up and focused on educating healthcare workers of the future 

Services
Schools
OTC: CCDC

Concorde Career Colleges

5800 Foxridge Drive
- Suite 500
Mission, KS 66202
Phone: 913-831-9977
 
Jack Brozman
Chairman, President and
Chief Executive Officer

Interview conducted by:
Walter Banks
Co-Publisher

CEOCFOinterviews.com
November 2001

About Concorde Career Colleges,

Concorde Career Colleges, Inc. was formed in 1988, and owns and operates eleven institutions that offer career vocational training programs. All eleven Concorde Career Institutes have been providing educational training for at least thirty years. Concorde has helped thousands of students prepare for successful careers.
Campus sites are: Garden Grove, CA, North Hollywood, CA, San Bernardino, CA, San Diego, CA, Denver, CO, Jacksonville, FL, Lauderdale Lakes, FL, Tampa, FL, Kansas City, MO, Portland, OR, Memphis, TN.

Concorde is dedicated to helping their students succeed. Their admissions process is simple and easy to complete, and financial assistance is available to those who qualify. At Concorde, preparing for a career doesn't take forever. Their focused programs provide outstanding career training in a format designed to fit your schedule. Classes for all programs are held during the day. Evening classes are also available for a number of programs.

Their training programs are short, affordable and hands-on. Concorde offers training programs in: Medical Assisting, Dental Assisting, Insurance Coding, Respiratory Therapy, Surgical Technology, Vocational/Practical Nursing, Patient Care, and more.

Concorde students enjoy hands-on training from medical professionals both in the classroom and in clinical sites. Their specialized Externship Program places students in area hospitals and medical facilities where they work side by side with doctors and other healthcare professionals.

Concorde's Graduate Services Department works closely with students and graduates, preparing them for externships and assisting with job placement.


CEOCFOinterviews: Mr. Brozman, please give us a brief history of Concorde Career Colleges.

Mr. Brozman:  Concorde has been in the post secondary education training business for thirty plus years, starting from the late sixties.  We presently operate eleven campuses all providing allied health education.  Concorde has suffered through some difficult times, like many institutions in the early nineties, with a lack of lenders and regulatory pressure.  I became President of the company in the early nineties. We hired a new CEO in 1997 to run the company and I became chairman of the board.  It didn't work out and Concorde began to lose money from 1998 to 2000, because enrollment had gone down under his leadership.  Once the new CEO left, I assumed the position of CEO again and decided to remain in that position.  I hired some experienced individuals that I knew in the industry, as well as individuals I worked with at another company, our CFO and Vice President of human resources.  We have built a very strong senior management team that has been in place for slightly over a year now.  I believe we have been able to accomplish many things that have just begun to reflect in our financial performance and student population this year, as we have become profitable.

CEOCFOinterviews:  What would you say was your most recent and exciting news?

Mr. Brozman:  We now have over 4500 students enrolled in our programs, when I returned to the position of CEO, there were 2800 students enrolled. Therefore, we have had much growth in the area of our enrollment, but I think a lot of it has to do with our programs and the new programs that we have added in nursing, surgical tech, radiology tech, respiratory therapy and building our insurance coding and billing program.  Many institutions in our industry went the "tech route" and there has been a great demand for tech workers over the past decade.  We began eliminating some programs that we offered in the early nineties in areas other than healthcare.  We have really concentrated on healthcare, and we feel very good about that.  There is still a significant shortage in the area of healthcare that needs to be addressed, which we want to be able to address. There is a nursing shortage in this country.  There are many individuals interested in pursuing a career in nursing, but there are a limited number of institutions that offer the training or that are allowed to train nurses.  We offer nursing programs in 5 campuses and we are adding that program to some of our other campuses now.  We are doing contract training for large hospital groups and training some of their employees to become nurses.  We find that very exciting, when the student goes through the training they will have a job waiting for them, and this is very positive. The healthcare field is less affected by the economy because people always need healthcare.

CEOCFOinterviews:  How do prospective students find out about your school?

Mr. Brozman:  We get a lot of referrals.  About 30% of the people who come to us are referrals from other students and employers.  Therefore, we see the referrals as a measure of our quality.  We like to hear that Concorde has done good things and that the people that come to us are happy.  If our students are successful, then we are successful.  We also do other things to bring students to us, such as television, print, direct mail and we have started getting into the high schools.  Not every student that comes out of high school is right for the four year college, therefore we get students form there and also at job fairs, where people are looking for new careers.  We also work with rehab counselors and back- to- work counselors around the country. 

CEOCFOinterviews:  What gives you an "edge" in attracting students over your competition?

Mr. Brozman:  Our students do check out other schools and we don't discourage that, typically in our cities there are other schools that offer training in just about everything that we do.  We consider it a good thing that students look at other schools, because they will be able to see our quality.  We don't concern our selves greatly with the competition, we do what we do, and do it well.  Furthermore, many students going through orientation have expressed positive reasons why they have chosen Concorde over other schools that they have checked out.  Bottom line, the edge is our employees and the fact that they care about the students.

CEOCFOinterviews:  Do you provide financial assistance?

Mr. Brozman: Yes, most of the students get Pell grants or guaranteed student loans, and there is a large amount of local money or state grants that are established for back-to-work programs. Some of the funding comes from the students themselves or their families. The title 4 programs provide for many students to go to school and have good careers, that wouldn't be able to otherwise.

CEOCFOinterviews:  How many schools do you have in the United States?

Mr. Brozman:  We have eleven, four in California, three in Florida, and we are in Portland, Denver, Kansas City, and Memphis.  We are in major metropolitan areas with populations of at least one million.

CEOCFOinterviews:  Were these schools built by you or acquired?

Mr. Brozman:  They were acquired from individual owners, years ago.  We haven't done an acquisition in 10-12 years in this company.  The exciting thing for us from a growth prospective is that now we are in a position to do that.

CEOCFOinterviews:  So are you now thinking about acquisitions for the near future? 

Mr. Brozman: We are strongly considering acquisitions and are presently reviewing some deals.  It's part of the turn around story, now we are in a position to do that which we were not able to do before, with an excess of seven million dollars in cash and no bank debt, and being cash-flow positive, it is a good time for us to follow through with some acquisition.  Our growth for the last year and a half has been internal in a many ways, one of which is enrolling more students in our existing programs.  We have the capacity and the ability to train more students.  We have added more programs that we have had success with in one campus and we have been trying to spread them to other campuses.  We have the contract training growth opportunity as well.  Part of our growth has been in what I call our " educational delivery" because we are adding more night courses and weekend courses.  The employment rate is high, and with have most of our students working, that makes night and weekend classes seem much more attractive than they were years ago. I admire our students that are working full-time and going to school, it isn't easy and our hats are off to them.  These night and weekend classes make it more feasible.

CEOCFOinterviews: What excites you about your job in the schools sector?

Mr. Brozman: We want to know what the employers need and also solve those needs, just training to train, is not where we want to be. We want education with results for our students, where there's a real goal and a job and greater future. What got me really excited about what we do is when I went out and started visiting the employers where our students work after they've graduated, and heard some of their success stories. One particular success story is that of a graduate who is a medical assistant and has gone on to work on the heart transplant unit at a hospital. If you were aware of where some of our students came from you would be totally amazed. We also have a homeless student who is achieving straight "A's" in our respiratory therapy program. Therefore, we feel that we are doing some good things to help our students. It's about the quality of what we do, and if we do quality work and do right by our students, I think that we will be very profitable and I think that we are doing that right now.

CEOCFOinterviews: Can you tell us about your financial position?

Mr. Brozman: I think the important thing for our company is that we've got an experienced management team, while we are not a huge company, we are in a very solid financial position.  We are not leveraged at all.  Our board authorized buying back a million shares of our stock at the end of last year, and we've been doing this because we feel good about our company. 

CEOCFOinterviews: In closing, what would you like to say to your shareholders and potential investors?

Mr. Brozman: We've worked hard to turn it around to where it's not just one good quarter and then go backwards. We choose rather do the slow fix that really sticks, with a sound foundation to grow this company.

As CEO and Chairman of the board, I have a huge stake owning quite a bit of stock in this company and want to see us succeed more than anyone involved. I'm motivated and our senior management team who likewise has significant options in ownership wants to see the company succeed. I think we're well poised for growth and much success.