Laureate Education Reviews

Pros

-Internal Promotions (4 positions in 4.5 years)
-Nice location
-Okay compensation and benefits
-If you come in with experience, you have a better advantage at getting a better salary, if you ask for it

Cons

-Promotions come with little if no salary compensation (sometimes you have to take them without knowing what you might get)
-Many people leave and come back, because that is the only time they can get properly compensated.
-They are trying to lower the gap between salaries. Some positions have large gaps. For example one person might make 40,000 and another 80,000 with the same responsibilities.
-Workloads are not fairly balanced.
-Morale is low, no sense of teams.

Advice to Senior Management

Compensate your good employees, so they stop leaving.

Pros

Career advancement, great location, dedicated employees, fast paced environment, global focus and understanding, has a lot of potential to be a good place to work

Cons

No work life balance, Unrealistic expectations and delivery timelines, No standardization of practices across entities but demands to supply information across entities, culture of long hours and little strategy

Advice to Senior Management

Go home once in a while, think about issues before - not after - they happen and cause fire drills for your employees

Pros

1. International Setup
2. Good salary if you can ask for !

Cons

1. No SME's to help since everyone is leaving the department.
2. The HR Department and the Sr. Management sucks big time
3. Employees not given any breathing space and VPs of HR have too much power and upper management just enjoys the show
4. You are abused heavily even if you deliver 99.99 % accuracy
5. Heavily understaffed and huge turnover, every month an employee leaves
6. No efforts are made by VP's to ratin and respect the employees
7. Upper management change the policies as they wish and no body takes any action on them
8. No work life balance since people work from 8 AM to 8 PM
9. You must work as per their whims else your review is screwed up big time
10. Lack of attention to issues of employees and terrible management.
11. Any of your concerns to HR will create threats to you since HR is just watching and doing nothing !! So beware telling your concerns to HR !!!
12. Tremendous micromanagement and employees treated very badly

In my last 15 years of carrer this was the craziest place i worked at. I wish i could rewind those days and undo my mistake to join this company. I repent working here and after joining a new company i realize what trauma i have been at Laureate. Working here was a nightmare and all the reviews are saying the trust since i have been through this.

Advice to Senior Management

I hope management will wake up one day when all employees have left. But the supreme VP's will still be messing around with employees. No one is going to join your company unless you take a serious action on your top management. Learn moral ethics of humanity and then employ people so that atlease they are treated properly.

Pros

Nice and Intelligent staff.
Location
Pay is OK
Global company, no layoffs
70% education discount for employees

Cons

Disorganized
Terrible Sr Management.
Lack of direction
Unclear or poorly communicated goals and objective
No work-life balance. managent iod doing way too much with limited resources.

Advice to Senior Management

Reward your employees appropriately and better communicate the agendas and objectives of the company. Employees need to understand why the company direction and structure changes every six months.

Pros

The company is large enough to offer room for advancement.

Cons

Does not compensate internal employees fairly. Pay less qualified people from the outside more. Often tell people one salary and pay them something different. No internal offer letters so nothing is in writing.

Advice to Senior Management

Be open with employees about situation. Practice fair compensation.

Pros

- plenty of advancement opportunity within certain departments
- global company/ chance to work in the international sector
- large company with a lot of talented people
- competitive salary
- excellent location (baltimore)

Cons

- terrible work/life balance: time off is heavily discouraged, management is very inflexible in this regard (no work from home, etc) and even somewhat threatening, as a result a lot of employees are overworked and burnt out
- only 2 weeks of vacation, which has to be earned and cannot carry over, but management does not allow a large number of people to take off at the same time, so there is little/no opportunity to take more than a couple days and you usually end up losing a couple of days
- most departments are understaffed and turnover is very high, both voluntarily and involuntarily
- the corporate culture is very strong at laureate. if you fit it, great, if not they will make your life very difficult until you either quit or they find a reason to fire you

Advice to Senior Management

Management really needs to focus more on the little things they can do to make employees want to stick around and do well. Micromanagement is excessive, which breeds a culture of distrust, and the benefits are not good enough to balance out the heavy work load.

Pros

Competitve salary
Excellent benefits package
Chance to work in higher education
Great international business base
Very diverse workforce
Educational discounts to employees

Cons

Management is reluctant to take responsibility for things that go wrong
Lack of advancement opportunities
Poor training program, employees are given little direction or training and just expected to know how to do their work
Exployees are looked down upon for leaving at a resonable time or requesting time off even if their work is completed
No work life balance
Employees are treated as a hammer or other tool rather than a human being

Advice to Senior Management

Take a more strategic appraoch to decision making, and be less reactive in your decisions. If you focus on down the road as opposed to what is immediately in front of you, you will gain the opportunity to be ahead of the curve and in front of your competitors.

Pros

resources to do what you want in course development - they will make it look too good to be true and it is.

Cons

over the top work, no appreciation, constant change to the point of craziness.There is no work life balance- and then you can work your butt off and get shown the door. Things change so often it is hard to know what end is up. This looks good and glossy from the outside but it is really a magic act. The very top talks a good story but it does not filter down and senior managers and VPs do whatever they want with nothing to keep them in check.

Advice to Senior Management

find out what is really going on and with some of your top managers- they are loose cannons on the deck. Things are going to crash and burn if this keeps up

Pros

Many interesting and bright employees. Challenging and interesting work. Nice physical plant. The building is located in a beautiful part of the city. The company is growing and has not really been affected by the recession. Some prominent leaders ( Pres. Clinton, Desmond Tutu, and Nelson Mandela) are associated with the company.If you want to move up it is relatively easy if you are single and have endless hours to work. Perks such as tuition remission and a break in care insurance add a nice touch.

Cons

The trade off for a higher salary is unreasonable work load and insane hours. Unhealthy work/life balance. Those with families are encouraged to forget about them if they want a promotion. Many employees are overworked. Managers and Directors mistreat and threaten staff. Fast paced environment really means chaotic and disorganized. Tough to take vacation. You might receive a phone call while on vacation or be asked to call in to meetings if you are out sick. Lots of abrupt turnover- both firing and folks just abruptly resigning.Overall a toxic work environment which is unfortunate given the resources and growth at the company.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership should never involve steamrolling your own staff to get what you want. Learn the difference between ordering staff around and management. Treat your employees well. They might just stick around. Feedback should always be constructive. Tearing the staff down is counterproductive.

Pros

Some departments are very flexible.

Cons

Simply put, prepare to be underpaid and receive minimal raises as you advance.

Advice to Senior Management

Take better care of your current employees. As more places start to hire you're going to be hurting as people make their escape.