Career Education (NASDAQ:CECO) Turning to Bachelor, Master's Programs

Career Education (NASDAQ:CECO) has changed it price points for its AIU and CTU brands, as they turn their focus towards Bachelor and Master's Programs and away from associate programs.

Barclays said, "Career Education recently updated price points for its AIU and CTU brands for 2011, including increases for associate and reductions for bachelor's and master's programs...While we expect the new pricing to have limited impact on total CECO revenues, the changes are interesting from a competitive standpoint. Along with Apollo (Nasdaq:APOL), CECO has stated a desire to focus more on bachelor degree completion and master's programs, which have better student outcomes than associate (including lower default rates and bad debt expense). With its new pricing, AIU and CTU move from being in the middle of the for-profit pack in terms of bachelor's price point to a 10%-20% discount to peers including APOL, Strayer (Nasdaq:STRA), and DeVry (NYSE:DV) (but still above American Public Education (Nasdaq:APEI) and Bridgepoint Education (NYSE:BPI)."

Barclays maintains an "Overweight" rating on Career Education, which closed on Tuesday at $19.86, up $0.30, or 1.53 percent. They have a price target of $29 on Career Education.