ITT Educational Services, Inc.

1963–1972

ITT Educational Services, Inc. is a private, postsecondary education provider, with 67 colleges operating in 28 states. The colleges, called ITT Technical Institutes, offer technology-focused, career-oriented programs that lead primarily to associate's and bachelor's degrees. ITT's total enrollment is approximately 25,000, and its students attend classes year-round.

1960s: Building the Business

The business that was eventually to become ITT Educational Services began as part of Howard W. Sams and Co. Inc., an Indianapolis-based publisher of technical training manuals and textbooks. Sams had been in the publishing business for almost 20 years when it decided to try its hand at running a private trade school. It established its first school--Sams Technical Institute--in Indianapolis in 1963. The institute, which taught electronics, consisted of 28 students. Sams acquired two more schools in 1965 and 1966: Teletronic Technical Institute, of Evansville, Indiana; and Acme Institute of Technology, Inc., in Dayton, Ohio. A fourth school was also opened in Fort Wayne, Indiana, during that time period.

In October of 1966, Howard W. Sams and Co. was purchased by ITT Corporation, a large, New York-based conglomerate. Two years later, ITT Corporation incorporated its private school subsidiary as 'ITT Educational Services' and established its headquarters in Indianapolis. ITT's first president was William D. Renner, who had previously been the vice-president of training for Howard W. Sams.

In 1968, with the backing of its capital-rich parent, ITT Educational embarked upon an ambitious plan for expansion that led to a flurry of acquisitions. By the end of the year, the company had acquired seven new schools located in Chicago, St. Louis, Boston, New York City, and Hempstead, New York. This brought the total number of schools in the ITT system to ten. The company began working toward standardizing the materials and lesson plans used in the various schools' courses by establishing curricula committees.

In 1969 ITT Educational entered the foreign market when it acquired Ecole de Gaulle, a Paris-based system of five schools focusing on vocational, business, commercial, and trade training. To hold and manage its international operations, the company established the subsidiary ITT Educational Services-Europe. Meanwhile, ITT continued to add to its domestic school system at a breakneck pace. Between February and early September of 1969, it acquired ten business and technical schools, scattered through Ohio, Michigan, Washington, Idaho, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington, D.C. It also opened two new schools in Bethesda and Annapolis, Maryland. Both the new schools operated under the name 'ITT Business Institute.'

1970s: Leadership Changes

ITT Educational started the new decade with a series of transitions in its leadership. Late in 1969, the company's first president, William Renner, relinquished the position he had assumed only the year before. He was replaced in 1970 by Burton Sheff. But in May of 1972, Sheff resigned, and ITT was once again leaderless. Sheff was replaced by Neil R. Cronin, who also stayed with the company for a short time.

'The main reason we decided to do the public stock offering was that we were a moderate sized company in a $23 billion-a-year corporation.

1957–1985

In 1974, however, ITT found a leader with a greater staying power: Richard McClintock. McClintock, who had been employed by ITT Corporation and its subsidiaries since 1957, had served previously as the company's comptroller and treasurer. Upon taking the helm in 1974, he immediately set about implementing new administrative structures and procedures. Two of his first initiatives were to establish an executive committee for the company and to begin establishing curriculum advisory committees for each region.

The year 1973 marked an important milestone in ITT's growth. That year, the company became a part of the Federal College-based tuition grant and loan programs, which had until then been reserved only for traditional colleges and universities. Acceptance into these programs allowed ITT to offer its students a full range of college loan and grant programs. This meant that attending an ITT school became a viable option for a new pool of students--those who needed federal financial aid to pay for schooling.

1980s: Adding New Divisions

After expanding its school system so rapidly in the late 1960s, ITT had spent much of the 1970s refining it. By the end of the 1970s, the company had significantly pared down the bulky system by selling or phasing out various schools, including ones in Boston, Akron, Toledo, New York, and Bethesda, Maryland. In 1980 the total number of schools was down to 21.

In 1981, however, the company began a period of controlled growth, implementing several new expansion initiatives. One of the first was the creation of a new division designed to target individuals who were already employed in the business world, but who wanted to improve existing or learn new skills. The new division, named the Business Division, opened its first school in Indianapolis in the spring of 1982. More schools of the same type followed--in Chicago, Los Angeles, Tampa, and Arlington, Texas.

Three years later, ITT created still another division: Employer Services. The Employer Services Division worked directly for businesses, training their employees in word processing. The division's services were offered originally at ITT locations in Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, and El Segundo, California. Shortly after the division was formed, however, it expanded its services to temporary staffing by merging with a Los Angeles-based provider of interim personnel.

The company also grew via its old, tried-and-true method of adding new schools in new locations. Between 1981 and the end of 1985, more than a dozen new ITT facilities opened in Florida, California, Indiana, Texas, Tennessee, Utah, and Colorado.

In October 1984, ITT's ten-year leader, Richard McClintock, died. The company's executive committee took over day-to-day governance of the operation until a new president could be appointed, and in September of 1985, the position was filled by Rene Champagne. Champagne had spent 16 years in various high-level administrative positions with Kendall Company, a subsidiary of Colgate-Palmolive. Immediately prior to joining ITT Educational, he had served as the executive vice-president and chief operating officer of Continental Pharma Cryosan Inc., a health care company.

1985–2000

The mid-1980s brought changes to ITT's Employer Services Division. In 1985 the division announced that it was closing the training and temporary staffing operations in Indianapolis, Chicago, Houston, and Los Angeles. Two years later, the Employer Services Division broadened its services by offering both temporary and permanent technical staff placement. In 1988, however, the entire division was sold to Olsten Corporation.

In 1986 the company's Resident Division took steps to become more unified and standardized. The schools operating under the Resident Division--which were those that offered such technical programs as electronics and HVAC--were renamed 'ITT Technical Institutes.' The Resident Division itself also was rechristened to correspond to the schools' new name, becoming the ITT Technical Institutes Division.

1990s: Ownership Changes and Rapid Growth

The early 1990s marked a turning point in ITT's evolution. In 1992 the company unveiled the Vision 2000 plan, a strategy for changing the way it was perceived. Since its formation in the 1960s, ITT institutes had been viewed primarily as 'trade schools.' Under the Vision 2000 initiative, however, the company planned to make the institutes more like actual colleges by offering more bachelor's degrees. In addition to this repositioning, Vision 2000 called for aggressive geographic expansion and the addition of new curricula. ITT's new goal was to have a network of 80 technical colleges located across the country, serving more than 45,000 students, by the year 2000.

ITT immediately took steps toward achieving its newly articulated goals. By the end of 1993, four new schools had been opened and plans were under way for three more. The company also had added several new degree programs to its offerings, including a bachelor of applied science in hospitality management, a bachelor of applied science in industrial design, and a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering technology. By the end of 1994, ITT Educational was operating 54 schools in 25 states. Of the more than 20,000 students it served, approximately 70 percent were enrolled in electronics-engineering technology and related programs.

In December 1994, ITT's parent company, ITT Corporation, spun off 17 percent of ITT Educational in a $20 million initial public offering, still retaining majority ownership of 83 percent. The goal of the spin-off, according to ITT Educational President Rene Champagne, was to raise the company's visibility among investors. 'The main reason we decided to do the public stock offering was that we were a moderate sized company in a $23 billion-a-year corporation. We were getting lost in the corporate complex,' he said in a June 1995 interview with the Indianapolis Star. 'Most people in the investment community were not aware of who we were.' Less than a year after the spin-off, ITT Corporation itself announced a sweeping reorganization. During the restructuring, the giant conglomerate split into three publicly held companies. ITT Educational was a part of the new public company that continued to be called ITT Corporation.

In 1995, ITT took another step toward repositioning its 'schools' as 'colleges' when it established a Graduate Division at its Indianapolis ITT Technical Institute. The first degree offered by the Graduate Division was a master's in project management. The coursework and class schedules in the program were designed to appeal to adults who wanted to complete an advanced degree while working full-time.

Early 1998 brought yet another shift at the corporate level for ITT. In February, its parent company, ITT Corporation, was acquired by New York-based Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. From the time of the acquisition, ITT Educational knew that change was in the offing. Starwood made it immediately clear that it had no interest in maintaining an educational subsidiary that did not fit with its core businesses of hotels and gaming. In June, Starwood sold 13 million shares of ITT Educational stock, reducing its ownership in the company from 83 to 35 percent. Then in an early 1999 public offering, the company sold the remainder of its ITT Educational stock, making ITT an independent, stand-alone company for the first time in its history.

1998–2000

Despite the ownership upheavals of the 1990s, ITT had continued to steadily add new colleges and new programs to its system. By spring of 1999, the company had 67 ITT Technical Institutes operating nationwide. It was also in the middle of rolling out an important new information technology program: Computer Network Systems Technology (CNST). ITT first introduced CNST at three locations in 1998, with plans to add it to 13 more schools in 1999. The program--which focused on such areas as computer network systems, programming, and Web development--was so well received, however, that the company decided to introduce it at 27 locations, rather than the 13 originally planned.

ITT Educational finished up 1999 with record revenues of $316.4 million, an 8.6 percent increase over 1998. Student enrollment was up by approximately 3.2 percent over the previous year. Enrollment increases were particularly noticeable in the schools offering the company's new CNST program; schools offering that program increased their total student enrollment as of December 31, 1999 by 7.8 percent over December 31, 1998.

What's Ahead for ITT Educational

As ITT moved into the future, it was placing increasing emphasis on its information technology program. The rapidly growing IT industry was in dire need of qualified workers, and demand was expected to increase in the coming years. ITT planned to capitalize on that demand. 'We are focused on repositioning our company to meet the demands of the `new economy' for more graduates in information technology,' Champagne said in a January 21, 2000 press release, adding 'The IT program is serving an important catalyst for future growth.'

The company planned to continue rapidly rolling out the IT program to the remainder of its schools in 2000. According to a January 21, 2000 press release, an additional 16 schools were expected to begin offering it during the first quarter of 2000. Additional schools were scheduled to begin offering the program in each of the three remaining quarters of 2000 to complete the roll-out by the end of the year. It was expected that with ITT's new focus on information technology and the continued roll-out of the CNST program to its schools, enrollment and revenues would increase in the coming years.