Adtalem says short report ‘inexcusably and unacceptably’ misrepresents business

Adtalem Global Education responded to claims in a report released on January 30 from Safkhet Capital. “The report contains numerous factual errors, demonstrates a poor understanding of our industry as well as rudimentary transaction accounting, and is a reckless attempt to defame the nation’s largest healthcare educator,” said Adtalem President and CEO Steve Beard. “Safkhet Capital’s inability to accurately state even the most basic facts undermines the credibility of the report and its purported premise. By way of example, the chairperson of Adtalem’s Board of Directors is Michael Malafronte (2022 – present), not former Chairperson Lisa Wardell, a fact plainly visible on Adtalem’s website. Additionally, erroneous figures are referenced for enrollment and graduation rates when accurate data is freely available from publicly accessible, U.S. government sources as well as from Adtalem’s own disclosures. The Safkhet Capital report also stated, “for-profits produce disastrously substandard results with most students unable to graduate, and even those who do face high levels of underemployment and higher levels of indebtedness.” We do not know where Safkhet Capital found data to support these assertions and, as it pertains to Adtalem, these claims are categorically false. Adtalem is proud to produce more nursing and Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) graduates than any institution in the U.S., award more medical and research doctoral degrees to African Americans than any other U.S. institution, and to have achieved 98% first-time residency attainment for graduates of our medical schools last year. Errors and gross misrepresentations of the nature described above are too numerous in the Safkhet Capital report to warrant a complete recounting, but they illustrate the flimsiness of the research. As for many of the claims made by Safkhet Capital – they are misleading, incomplete, and factually inaccurate. Because of Adtalem’s systemically important role in delivering practice-ready clinicians to the U.S. healthcare system, we feel compelled to correct some of the more egregious errors in the repor… While presenting itself as an advocacy effort in service of student borrowers and taxpayers, in fact, the Safkhet Capital report amounts to nothing more than a thinly veiled and deceptively constructed “short and distort” scheme designed to extract a quick return at the expense of Adtalem’s students, faculty, employees and shareholders.”