Salary, very politicized trade publication, management in other departments, relationships with domestic and overseas companies with questionable integrity. Also a major part of Plattform's customers are in an industry (for profit education) that is facing dropping graduation rates and much needed government scrutiny. I will be fair in saying that some of scrutiny was misguided, but not all. When the company you work for produces a trade publication with highly politicized articles where the author's words are filled with froth-mouthed vitriol accusing targeted political groups (i.e. articles saying things like "these [name your political group] no nothing!" etc...) you start to lose respect for the company you work due to a lack of professional attitude. I understand that the business has to be protected, but this simply went too far, too often, and waded into territory that I would call nothing short of childish.
Plattform had some massive management issues in my department from both a perspective of experience and workload. It's extremely frustrating when the people who are supposed to be mentoring you have no support/guidance themselves due to sustained work loads that are simply too much. Both workload and management did get much better closer to the time I left, but other departments were not so lucky. There were many times over the time I worked there where I was at a breaking point and was looking for other jobs due to the workload as well as my experience with some of Plattform's partners whom I don't believe were truly honest. Upper management would often times talk of great innovation ideas that I think would have benefited the company greatly, but their "run lean" strategy in regards to staffing left us with very little time for innovation and I found that many of these projects were shelved or forgotten. Plattform does hire a lot of fresh graduates, which is great in my opinion, however they have often times failed to hire experienced middle management.
Despite these growing pains and a salary that was nothing to brag about, the main reason why I left was because of the for profit education industry. Do I think there could be a place for profit education? Yes, as long as it truly does help the taxpayers and students by providing highly specialized programs that are worth the money. Do I think that some of the schools that Plattform works with meet these criteria? Yes. However, many of Plattform's clients are under scrutiny for offering worthless degrees, credits that don't transfer, and degrees that are extremely expensive targeted at veterans and those with lower income. The industry right now is rife with stories of dishonest business practices perpetuated by greed. I think that management truly does understand many of the problems that the American education system faces such as availability of education to poor and minority groups, but many of these schools simply charge way too much for the type of degrees offered. Some community colleges do indeed fall short, but in the end they won't saddle students with massive amounts of student debt and I have yet to truly see the cost-benefit of going to many of these schools given what I know about the industry. Also, some of the large schools that are facing the most scrutiny are supposed to be faith based companies, and either they are managed very poorly, or have some perverse way of justifying price gouging that I think should run contrary to their beliefs.
In the end I think there could be a place for some of these programs/schools, but I think that having to answer to shareholders as a publicly traded company in education industry often times opens things up for greed and abuse. I honestly hope that many of the players in the industry implement massive overhauls of their business practices, otherwise I won't shed any tears if they go out of business. In other words, shape up before a sometimes misguided and overreaching government creates havoc for those players who truly are honest businesses.
With dropping enrollment rates and the increased government scrutiny of for profit schools, Plattform's core business has some major inertia going against it.
