How Adtalem addresses the massive healthcare labor shortage
Adtalem Global Education (ATGE) released its third-quarter earnings, beating Wall Street expectations with $368 million in revenue and $0.93 adjusted EPS. The education company has a positive outlook for 2024 forecasting total enrollment trends to improve throughout the year. This will be paramount as the labor shortage for healthcare workers continues to increase.
Adtalem CEO Steve Beard joins Yahoo Finance to break down the staggering labor shortage in the healthcare workforce and how his company will address that shortage while student loan repayments start back up.
Beard gives insight to some of the staggering figures in the labor shortage: "We estimate there is a current shortage in nursing, about 200,000 nurses, that's expected to grow. About 60,000 physicians that are under supply, 15,000 in veterinarians, and of course the behavioral health needs of the country are growing rapidly."
Beard makes the distinction between other institutions and Adtalem, pointing out its advantage of finding "the overlooked population of students that may have not gotten into other institutions and give them an opportunity."
Click here to watch the full interview on the Yahoo Finance YouTube page or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: When we talk about the labor shortage, I give us a sense of where that stands more broadly. Obviously, there's a need for healthcare providers across the board, but just how big of a gap are you personally seeing between demand and supply at this point?
STEVE BEARD: It's huge. There's-- we estimate there's a current shortage in nursing of about 200,000 nurses, and that's expected to grow. About 60,000 physicians that are undersupplied, about a 15,000 shortage in veterinarians, and obviously, the behavioral health needs of the country are growing rapidly. So these are durable gaps in workforce supply, and we're privileged to be able to try to address them as the largest healthcare educator in the country at scale.
- Steve what are you doing to scale to meet that demand that you're talking about? You put out a lot of big numbers there, so what are you doing to grow the business?
STEVE BEARD: Yeah, we are seeking to expand our market leading position in nursing in medical education, in behavioral health, and in veterinary medicine. So it's really about taking advantage of that demand, taking advantage of the need that providers have, and getting out in front of students and getting our value proposition in front of them.
What's really distinctive about what we do is that we're not a set of institutions that are focused on being highly exclusive. We're really institutions with an access mission. So our goal is to find the overlooked population of students that may have not gotten into other institutions and give them an opportunity to join these attractive and rewarding professions where the workforce gaps are so big.
SEANA SMITH: Steve, given the fact that student debt is at an all time high, what can you tell us, or can you give us any insight on your pricing strategy and how that strategy looks going forward?
STEVE BEARD: Yeah, so we've been working to optimize price across our program mix. Where we've got pricing power, we've taken pricing up. Where we've been not competitive or over priced, we've taken price down. But generally speaking, we believe that all of our programs are affordable, and just as importantly, they're programs that train people for jobs that are well-paying, highly attractive, and where the demand is great. As a result, we have some of the lowest cohort default rates in all of higher education, because our graduates are employed, they're paid well, and they can service their loans.
- All right, Steve Beard Adtalem Global Education CEO. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.
STEVE BEARD: Thank you.
