Universal Technical Institute (UTI) – Helping Hand to Harvard?
On September 30th, as reported by CNN (See HERE), President Trump previewed a $500M deal on trade schools with Harvard University, following months of talks about a potential settlement amid a broader fight between the Trump administration and the school. Trump said Tuesday that officials are “very close” to a deal and Harvard “will be paying about $500 million and they’ll be operating trade schools. They’ll be teaching people how to do AI and lots of other things, engines, lots of things.”
Truist analyst Jasper Bibb wrote that they think it is unlikely that Harvard would opt to stand up trade schools on their own and suspect any agreement would likely entail a partnership with an existing operator. No details are available on the structure of the agreement yet. “We believe Universal Technical Institute would be a logical potential partner being: (1) the largest trade school in the country; (2) having an existing framework for external partnerships following the recent Heartland (Private) deal; and (3) the administration’s friendly policy toward for-profit education.”
Separately, B. Riley hosted meetings with UTI management, including COO Todd Hitchcock and VP of Corporate Finance & Investor Relations Matt Kempton. They came away with three takeaways:
• First, as COO Todd Hitchcock put it, “demand is everywhere,” referring to how demand for skilled labor continues to increase across all geographies.
• Second, UTI continues to make positive strides in campus optimizations, rationalizing facilities to drive greater revenue per square foot and enabling higher structural margins across the business.
• Third, while UTI is in the midst of a period of heightened investment, with at least two new campuses expected to open annually over the next several years, analyst Griffin Boss sees these investments as driving robust growth in FY28—once the new campus builds initiated in FY26 begin contributing to results—and beyond, above current top line growth levels.
