Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Shrinking Pool

HM Riverdeep swims along on its way to profitability. All's quiet in the privately held company, and who knows what's happening with the financial maneuvering that was supposed to pay for Barry O'Callaghan's dreams of educational publishing hegemony.

Over at Scholastic, things aren't so bright and rosy. This educational publishing company is looking to slash expenses by $25 million.

The economy isn't booming these days, and budgets are tight in the education world. The company is looking to the old folks, those over the age of 50, and encouraging them to jump. After all, it's the longest lasting who make the most money, and if they'd go quietly and leave the jobs to the low-paid crowd, there'd be a nice cost savings right there.

There's sure to be redundancies (that's synergies in corporate-speak) and there won't be any pay increases this year, or next most likely. No new employees will be sought; open jobs will be eliminated or turned over to those who will have to do more for less, an acceptable situation as compared to unemployment.

Scholastic plans to accomplish all this by the end of this year. That's three months to cut $25 million from the budget, and that has the sound of some drastic slicing and dicing. The Harry Potter phenomenon has played out, there's nothing new coming down the track, and there's no other solution than to shrink the company.

Competition is growing more fierce by the day. Who'll be left standing when the dust settles?

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