Houlihan Lokey Advises Education Management Corporation

We are pleased to announce the sale of substantially all of the assets of Education Management Corporation (EDMC) to Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH), an affiliate of the Dream Center Foundation. The transaction closed on October 18, 2017.

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, EDMC is one of the largest for-profit providers of post-secondary education in the United States, based on student enrollment and revenue, with a total of 102 locations in 31 U.S. states. The company offers academic programs to students through campus-based and online instruction, or through a combination of both, and is committed to offering quality academic programs and improving the learning experience for its students. EDMC owns and operates South University, Argosy University, and the Art Institutes. Its educational institutions offer students the opportunity to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees and certain specialized non-degree diplomas in a broad range of disciplines, including business, culinary arts, design, education, fashion, health sciences, information technology, legal studies, media arts, and psychology and behavioral sciences.

The transaction resulted in the transfer of roughly 60,000 students and 15,000 employees at schools managed by EDMC to DCEH. DCEH is an affiliate of the Dream Center Foundation, a Los Angeles-based philanthropic organization affiliated with a Pentecostal church that funds programs across the country for underprivileged people. The deal signals a shift of the institutions from for-profit education providers to not-for-profit institutions.

Faculty and staff remain at locations that are not currently accepting new students. These EDMC schools will remain operational, and current students will have an opportunity to graduate from their chosen programs. Certain schools will remain part of EDMC until they are also acquired by DCEH within the next several months.