Compared to this same time last year, everything is trending in the wrong direction:
- Customer Success output is way down — fewer courses built, slower turnaround, more backlog.
- IA/EA adoptions are noticeably lower across multiple disciplines.
- Salesforce closed business is so far behind that leadership is blaming “CRM hygiene” instead of acknowledging the real problem.
- Faculty frustration is rising — some are openly threatening to switch materials.
- Customer Success and reps are already exhausted, and it’s not even September.
We’re running back‑to‑school with a skeleton crew and a roll of duct tape. Org chart vacancies everywhere. New hires who don’t understand their roles or the workflows they’re supposed to support. Experienced colleagues continuing to exit, and many who remain are actively looking for new careers.
And here’s the part leadership won’t say out loud:
This is NOT what Apollo wanted heading into an IPO.
Apollo expected a clean, stable, predictable back‑to‑school season — something they could point to when selling the story to Wall Street. Instead, they’re getting:
collapsing workflows
missed in‑stock dates
angry faculty
exhausted teams
shrinking adoption pipelines
declining IA/EA momentum
internal confusion about roles, ownership, and accountability
This is the opposite of “IPO‑ready.”
And it all ties back to the May 1st reorg.
The May 1st reorg removed the last wave of people who actually understood Higher Ed The people who stabilized operations, built courses correctly, managed timelines, and kept faculty relationships intact.
In their place, leadership installed a structure full of:
- inexperienced managers
- unclear roles
- pods stretched across institutions
- Customer Success teams drowning in work
- reps covering territories that make no sense
- workflows patched together with duct tape
The May 1st reorg wasn’t a “reset.”
It was a detonation, and we’re living in the blast radius.
Apollo wanted a clean runway to an IPO. Instead, they got a back‑to‑school season that looks like a controlled crash.
Employees can see it.
Faculty can feel it.
Customers are talking about it.
And the numbers reflect it.
This isn’t “a tough year.”
It’s a disaster, one created by leadership decisions that gutted the last of the real industry talent right before the busiest stretch of the year.
If Apollo thought the May 1st reorg would make Cengage look stronger heading into an IPO, they’re now seeing the truth:
You can’t cut your way to stability.
You can’t reorganize your way to expertise.
And you can’t IPO your way out of operational collapse.