Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Sara Gubins - Banc of America Securities.
Sara Gubins – Banc of America
On Becker, it sound like you’re taking a long-term focus, but I’m wondering if there are any shorter term cost action that’s you’re planning to take in order to stabilize operating margins?
Daniel Hamburger
Sure. Absolutely Sara, and as Rick pointed out the margins are still very attractive there. Certainly down from the very high border mark of last year, but in the long-term view they are will above where we use to be just a few years ago. So, you have to balance those factors. Certainly, the management team at Becker is very much on top of the cost structure of the business and they are taking a look at deferring items or non-discretionary spending, either cutting or deferring those things and we continue to review that on a very frequent basis right now as we assess how the demand profile looks?
Sara Gubins - Banc of America Securities
Okay, but no plans for kind of significant costs in that group?
Daniel Hamburger
No. Not at this point, nothing drastic.
Sara Gubins - Banc of America Securities
Okay. I know it’s early, but any sense of how spring enrollment trends are looking? Are you continuing to see strong demand for programs?
Daniel Hamburger
We are and of course we’ll announce the spring enrollments for DeVry University in April, and certainly we can’t make any projection now, but I would like remind everybody that given large increases in percentage terms that we’ve seen in recent periods, eventually the comparisons on a percentage basis become a little bit more difficult.
Sara Gubins - Banc of America Securities
Okay and then could you give an update on your cost to acquire new students and marketing costs in general?
Daniel Hamburger
Sure. The cost to attract new student to DeVry University, Ross University, Chamberlain College of Nursing, to Apollo College, Western Career College, when you look across we are pleased with how that’s going, we are seeing our marketing teams do increasingly better jobs at identifying sources at using sophisticated database marketing techniques. So there are stable to positive trends in the efficiency of that process.
Given that, and also for other reasons as we’ve outlined many times, because the cost to attract the students is X, and the lifetime economic value is significantly higher than X, that is a very positive value accretive way to deploy our owners capital. So, we are going to continue to invest in academic quality initiatives first and foremost, but also here in this to your question in ways to spend more growth to marketing and recruiting activities.
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