The chief executive of Strayer Inc., a higher-education company that has pointedly avoided the aggressive growth strategies of many of its competitors, has been named CEO of the Year for 2007 by Morningstar, an independent investment-research company.
Strayer, based in Arlington, Va., owns Strayer University, which operates 51 campuses in 12 states in the eastern United States and Washington, D.C. Strayer enrolls 36,000 students, about half of whom take all their courses online.
Morningstar said it had chosen to honor Strayer’s CEO, Robert Silberman, because he has “created a culture at Strayer that would rather provide quality education with subpar short-term financial performance than offer subpar education for short-term financial gain.”
In an industry where competitors seek to bolster their revenue by “packing students into seats regardless of the consequences,” Morningstar said Strayer was notable for “keeping growth at a manageable eight to 10 campuses a year” — an approach that “has helped ensure that Strayer’s schools are opened only when qualified faculty and staff are available.”
As Morningstar noted, the company is also among the most financially successful of its peers, with profit margins of about 30 percent.
Mr. Silberman, who formerly ran an energy company and was an assistant secretary of the Army during the first Bush administration, became CEO in 2001. —Goldie Blumenstyk
