Great company destroyed by Private Equity - Executive Director Cengage Employee Review

2.0
Dec 15, 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Cengage Learning was once (during the Thomson years) a powerful higher education company with some of the best authors and textbooks on the market.

Cons

Now in bankruptcy due to mismanagement by Apax and former senior management. I can't make a judgement on current management, but from the outside looking in, they seem to be just trying to hang on and waiting for the big payoff when company assets are sold off.

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1.0
Jul 13, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The individuals below the management level are good people, with some good people at management but C-Suite is horrible.

Cons

C-Suite hides their plans under corporate speak. Cengage was a family owned private company and they sold and ever since then has had, debt, schemes to shuffle and restructure debt while implementing RIFs after RIFs after RIFs...never ending and amazingly has been in increased this last year. From their actions it's outsource as much as you can of company operations and squeeze value from Intellectual Property. Look how many times they've renamed themselves. They had a CTO join for about a month or two until she realized it was a role with no team, no authority and left. The CEO is amazing at spin, you hear "great, great, great" corporate speak as the reality on the ground is "this failed, that failed..what!? they're gone!...what they moved that department offshore!...what!? that department is now a vendor relationship...oh we're not DEI focused because the wind changed". The trend is contraction not expansion, no ground breaking innovation. My jaded view from college on expensive books has only grew since I see how the sausage is made.

5
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