Business and Secretarial Schools (United States)

NAICS 2022 code 611410 — North American Industry Classification System, the U.S. government's standard industry-coding scheme.

1. Overview

Business and secretarial schools teach the practical skills of the office: typing and word processing, office procedures, reception and communications, bookkeeping basics, and stenographic skills such as shorthand and machine (court-reporting) stenography.[2] These are short, career-focused programs that award certificates or diplomas, not academic degrees.

As a distinct, standalone industry this is one of the smallest the federal government tracks. Government counts put it at roughly 94 establishments, about 1,061 employees, and roughly $126 million of receipts.[1] The classic name in the field, the Katharine Gibbs School, symbolized office training for most of the 20th century before closing its last campuses in 2011 — a fair emblem for what has happened to the narrowly defined "secretarial school."[5]

Why it still matters: the skills these schools teach have not disappeared — they have migrated. Office-administration, medical-office, and court-reporting training is now delivered mostly by community colleges, by larger degree-granting for-profit colleges, by computer-training firms, and by online course platforms — all of which sit in adjacent industry codes. So the money and the growth are real; they just mostly land outside NAICS 611410.

There is no public company that is a pure play on this code. Public-market investors reach the theme through diversified for-profit and career-education operators (Section 4); private investors reach it through proprietary schools, private-equity roll-ups of career colleges, court-reporting academies, and franchised or online training brands. The investment case is less about employment growth than about compliance, student acquisition, completion, employer relationships, and delivering inexpensive, job-relevant training at scale.

2. What it is and how it is structured

Scope. The Census definition covers establishments "primarily engaged in offering courses in office procedures and secretarial and stenographic skills," and that may also teach basic office software (word processing), office-machine operation, reception, and communications — anything aimed at a clerical, secretarial, or administrative career.[2] Instruction can be classroom-based, online, by correspondence, at a workplace, or at a client's facility.[2]

What it explicitly excludes — this matters, because it explains why the reported industry is so small:[2]

• Business degrees (bachelor's, MBA — Master of Business Administration, etc.) are in NAICS 611310, Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools.
• Computer/software training is in NAICS 611420, Computer Training.
• Professional and management development is in NAICS 611430.
• Broader vocational trades (welding, HVAC, cosmetology, computer maintenance, etc.) fall under NAICS 611519, Other Technical and Trade Schools.
• Job training for disadvantaged or disabled workers is in NAICS 624310, Vocational Rehabilitation Services.

That fence is the whole story. A for-profit college granting an associate degree in medical-office administration is counted in 611310, not here; an online academy teaching QuickBooks and Excel is counted in 611420. What is left inside 611410 is a thin residue of true certificate-only office/secretarial/stenography schools.

Ownership mix. The industry is overwhelmingly small, private, and for-profit: about 58 firms operate the establishments in this code.[1] Business models range from local private career and secretarial colleges, to online and correspondence providers, to broader vocational schools with an office-administration program, to employer-funded workforce training. Public and nonprofit institutions teach similar coursework but are classified elsewhere. The supplied federal data do not publish a public-versus-private ownership split, so none is inferred from the concentration figures below.

3. How big it is

Ground-truth federal statistics for NAICS 611410:

The Small Business Administration (SBA) treats a firm here as "small" up to $20.5 million in average annual receipts[1] — a threshold larger than most operators in this code will ever reach, underscoring how tiny the field is. (This is a federal eligibility line, not an estimate of industry revenue.) The Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI), the standard single-number concentration gauge, is suppressed in the federal data and so is not stated here.[1]

Two vintages, don't blend them. Receipts and firm count are from the 2022 Economic Census; payroll and employment are from 2023 County Business Patterns. Because the years differ, these should not be combined into a margin, growth rate, or productivity figure.

The undercount is the point. These numbers dramatically understate the real economy of office and administrative training, for three structural reasons:

1. Classification leakage. As Section 2 shows, most of what an ordinary person would call "business school" or "office/medical-admin training" is coded elsewhere (611310 degrees, 611420 computer training, 611430 management development, 611519 trades). A private research firm's broader "business certification and IT [information technology] schools" category — which bundles several of these — put that market at roughly $6.4 billion in 2025.[4] That $6.4 billion versus the $126 million here is the scale of the leakage.
2. Coverage gaps. County Business Patterns counts employer establishments and excludes the self-employed, private-household employees, and most government workers.[3] One-person tutors, independent online instructors, and much public training activity are therefore missing, and community and technical colleges — a large deliverer of comparable training — are not counted as "businesses" at all.
3. Employer and platform training. Corporate in-house programs and online subscription platforms capture demand that never shows up as a "school."

No supplied federal figure reports enrollment, tuition, profit, operating margin, completion rates, or student-loan exposure. Read the $126 million as the size of the pure-play certificate secretarial-school niche, not the size of "learning office skills in America," which is orders of magnitude larger and mostly sits in neighboring codes.

4. The investable universe

There is no public pure-play on NAICS 611410. The reported industry is 58 mostly tiny private firms.[1] Public-market investors instead buy diversified education, career-training, and online-learning companies whose programs overlap this theme (office administration, medical-office admin, allied health, IT, and business certificates) but are mostly classified in adjacent codes. Treat the table below as proxies for the broader career-education theme, not as members of this industry. Scale figures are approximate and as of the cited period.

(TTM = trailing twelve months. Market values move daily; segment disclosures, not whole-company size, are what map to this niche.)

Private and other owners. The genuine 611410 niche — certificate-only office, secretarial, and court-reporting schools — lives almost entirely in private hands. Named operators with overlapping exposure include:

• Penn Foster Group — owns Penn Foster Career School and Penn Foster College, offering administrative-assistant, bookkeeping, and business-management programs.[22]
• Education Affiliates — a privately held owner/operator of career schools (Fortis, All-State Career School, and related brands) whose portfolio includes business and office-administration training alongside healthcare and trades.[23]
• Ancora Education / Lindenwood Education System — operates private career-school brands including Miller-Motte, spanning business, IT, healthcare, and skilled trades; Lindenwood acquired Ancora in 2025.[24]

Beyond these, the niche runs on independently owned proprietary schools, small multi-campus chains, court-reporting academies (many affiliated with the National Court Reporters Association's approved-program network), and private-equity roll-ups of accredited career colleges. Community colleges — public and non-investable — are the single largest deliverer of comparable training. Federal data do not publish a complete owner-level mapping, so this is an overlapping set, not a verified list of the largest 611410 owners.

5. How the money works

A school like this is a simple tuition-in / cost-to-deliver-out business. Owners earn the spread between what students pay and what it costs to teach them — but nearly every lever is regulated.

• Revenue = student starts × net tuition × persistence. The core drivers are new student starts, tuition price per program, and how many students stay enrolled and complete. Because programs are short (weeks to two years), enrollment turns over fast, so marketing to refill seats is continuous. Revenue can come from tuition and installment payments, federal or state aid where programs qualify, employer-paid training, workforce-board contracts, and direct-to-consumer online course sales or subscriptions.
• Federal aid is often the real customer. For schools eligible for federal student aid (Title IV of the Higher Education Act — the main federal grant and loan programs), most tuition is effectively paid by federal grants and loans. The 90/10 rule caps the federal-aid share of a for-profit school's revenue at 90%, so operators must prove at least 10% comes from other sources.[10]
• Cost structure. The big costs are instructional staff, facilities and equipment (stenography machines, simulated offices, software), curriculum, student support, compliance/accreditation, refunds, bad debt, and — distinctively for for-profits — student-acquisition (marketing) cost, which can be a large share of the budget. For online providers, facilities are lighter but customer-acquisition cost (CAC), retention, completion support, and technology matter more; a learning management system (LMS) lowers the marginal cost of serving another student but does not eliminate marketing or regulatory cost.
• Metrics that matter to an owner or lender: student starts, enrollment conversion, persistence and completion; net revenue per student; CAC and marketing efficiency; refund rates; aid mix and 90/10 headroom; employer-contract revenue; job-placement and graduate-earnings outcomes; cohort default rate on student loans; and whether each program passes federal earnings-accountability tests (Section 7), because failure can cut off the federal-aid lifeline.
• Unit economics of a campus. A new campus or program is a fixed-cost bet: unprofitable until enough seats fill to cover instructors and rent, then it scales well. This is why enrollment momentum — not price — is the number the equity story turns on.

For a private buyer, the value of one of these schools is essentially its accreditation and Title IV eligibility, its enrollment pipeline, and its placement reputation — intangible assets that regulation can grant or destroy, plus any liabilities from prior recruiting or financial-aid practices.

6. What drives demand

• The office labor market. Demand for training tracks demand for the jobs, and the core occupation is large but essentially flat. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects total employment of secretaries and administrative assistants to be roughly unchanged from 2024 to 2034 — about 3.45 million jobs in 2024 with roughly 358,300 annual openings, mostly to replace workers who leave. Median annual pay was about $47,460 in May 2024, and most of these roles require only a high-school diploma and short on-the-job training — a structural headwind for paid certificate programs.[6]
• Automation and AI. Routine clerical work is being eroded by automation and artificial intelligence (AI) assistants and self-service tools. General secretarial instruction faces the most pressure; medical administration, legal support, bookkeeping, payroll, and software-enabled office roles are more defensible.
• The health-care exception. BLS projects faster (average) growth for medical secretaries and administrative assistants, because health-care demand outweighs automation.[6] This is why so many surviving office-training programs are branded around medical office administration and medical billing/coding.
• Court reporting — a genuine shortage. Court reporting/stenography is the standout pocket of demand. Roughly 23,000 stenographers remain, the workforce has shrunk about 21% over a decade, and about 81% are over age 50; industry groups report a ~42% drop in the number of stenography schools and a ~74% fall in enrollment.[8] BLS still projects "little or no change" in total court-reporter employment but about 1,700 openings per year, mostly to replace retirees.[7] That supply gap keeps the few remaining court-reporting schools alive — even as digital and AI transcription tools compete for the same work.[8]
• Reskilling cycles. Career-school enrollment is counter-cyclical and event-driven: it spikes when workers are laid off or when a hot skill emerges (the 2021–2022 surge is the recent example) and softens when the job market is calm.[4] Remote/hybrid work and adults seeking short, flexible credentials expand the addressable market for online delivery.

7. Regulation

NAICS classification itself creates no license. Regulation depends on the institution, program, state, delivery method, and funding source — and for any school touching federal student aid, it is the dominant force on the business.

• Title IV eligibility and accreditation. To access federal grants and loans, a school generally must be legally authorized by its state, accredited by an accreditor recognized by the U.S. Department of Education (ED), and meet federal institutional and program requirements; distance providers may also need authorization in states where their students live.[11] Losing accreditation or certification is an extinction-level event.
• The 90/10 rule. For-profit schools must draw at least 10% of revenue from non-federal sources. The expanded rules apply to fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2023, and two consecutive failures can cause loss of Title IV eligibility for at least two fiscal years.[10]
• Gainful Employment (GE) / Financial Value Transparency (FVT). ED finalized these rules on October 10, 2023, effective July 1, 2024, applying to essentially all programs at for-profit schools (and certificate programs at public/non-profit schools). A program must pass a debt-to-earnings test (it fails if graduates' median annual loan payment exceeds 8% of median annual earnings, or 20% of discretionary earnings) and an earnings-premium test (graduates must out-earn a typical high-school-only worker in the same state), plus new disclosure requirements.[9] For low-cost, modest-wage office programs this is a real threat and shapes which programs schools are willing to run.
• A regime in transition (as of 2026). A 2025 federal law reshaped this accountability landscape. Beginning July 1, 2026, new Workforce Pell grants open a federal-aid route for eligible short-term workforce programs — but a 611410 classification alone does not make a program eligible.[13] ED has also finalized a replacement accountability framework — the Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and an Earnings Accountability test — to succeed the existing GE regime.[12] Investors should underwrite a transition period rather than assume the 2024 rules hold unchanged.
• State authorization and occupational licensing. Schools must be licensed in the states where they operate, and downstream occupations add their own gates — court reporters, for example, face state certification/licensure and national certification through the National Court Reporters Association.[8]

The regulatory tightening of the past decade has been a major driver of consolidation and closure across for-profit career education, and the sector's fortunes swing with political control of the Department of Education.

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

For a code with only 58 firms, the reported market is highly concentrated at the top: the four largest firms take about 67.2% of receipts, the top eight about 80.2%, the top 20 about 94.1%, and the top 50 essentially all of it (99.9%).[1] In plain terms, a small number of multi-campus operators dominate, trailed by a long tail of tiny single-site schools; the pattern points to scale advantages in compliance, curriculum, marketing, technology, and student support.

The long-run dynamic is secular decline of the pure secretarial niche alongside migration of the underlying demand into degree-granting colleges, computer-training firms, and online platforms. The Katharine Gibbs story is the template: an iconic, high-placement secretarial-school brand founded in 1911 that trained an estimated 50,000 women and still reported ~98% job placement in the early 1980s, undone by word processing and computers automating the work, by cultural change, and finally by the collapse of the for-profit college that acquired it — closed for good in 2011.[5] Competition today comes less from other secretarial schools than from substitutes: community colleges and public workforce programs, degree-granting colleges, employer training, free or low-cost online courses, and AI tools that do the clerical work outright.

Visible consolidation is more common in adjacent adult-education markets than in the narrow 611410 data. American Public Education, for instance, has moved to combine its American Public University System, Rasmussen University, and Hondros College of Nursing into one institution — illustrating the value of shared accreditation, technology, marketing, and administration.[18] The most attractive consolidation targets are likely mixed career schools with transferable accreditation, underused campuses, strong local demand, and programs that can migrate online.

9. Risks

• Structural demand erosion. Core clerical occupations are automating and AI is accelerating it; the traditional product is in secular decline.[6]
• Regulatory / Title IV dependence. Loss of accreditation or state authorization, a 90/10 breach, or failure of earnings-accountability tests can cut off the federal aid most of these schools depend on.[9][10]
• Regulatory transition and political whiplash. For-profit-education rules tighten and loosen with each administration, and the 2026 shift to Workforce Pell / STATS creates real transition uncertainty.[12][13]
• Weak student outcomes. Poor completion, placement, or earnings can reduce demand and trigger regulatory scrutiny.
• High customer-acquisition cost. Paid advertising and lead generation can consume a large share of tuition revenue.
• Student churn and refunds. Withdrawals cut revenue and can create obligations to return federal aid.
• Reputational and litigation risk. The for-profit career-college sector carries a history of investigations into recruiting and outcomes claims, raising compliance cost and impairing enrollment.
• Substitution. Free or low-cost online learning and employer-provided training undercut the value of a paid certificate.
• Classification and data risk. Programs migrate between 611410, 611310, 611420, and 611430, making historical comparisons unreliable; federal employer data omit the self-employed and most government workers and measure no nonemployer activity.
• Concentration and illiquidity. A few firms account for most reported revenue, and — because there is no public pure-play — private owners face limited exit options.

10. How to invest, and the outlook

Public-market routes. There is no clean way to buy NAICS 611410 directly, and no dedicated exchange-traded fund (ETF) for the niche; exposure comes stock by stock. The practical approach is to own the diversified education and career-training operators in Section 4 (tickers GHC, STRA, ATGE, PRDO, APEI, LINC, UTI, COUR), understanding that only a sliver of their business is "secretarial/office training" and that their fortunes are driven by online degrees, allied health, skilled trades, and Department of Education policy. Read segment disclosures rather than applying a whole-company valuation to a small, unreported program category. These are small- to mid-cap stocks; some pay dividends (for example, Strategic Education has offered a dividend yield around 3%[14]) and all are highly sensitive to enrollment trends. Focus diligence on: exposure to short-cycle office training, federal-aid dependence and 90/10 headroom, completion/placement/earnings outcomes, marketing efficiency, accreditation durability, employer-funded revenue, and regulatory reserves.

Private routes. The genuine industry is a private-market game: buying or building independent proprietary schools, court-reporting academies, or medical-office-administration programs; funding online providers; or assembling private-equity roll-ups of accredited career colleges. Key diligence items are accreditation files, state licenses, Title IV standing and aid audits, earnings-accountability test margins, cohort outcomes, recruiting practices, technology ownership, instructor and lease costs, teach-out obligations, and customer-acquisition data — the intangibles that regulation can create or destroy.

Near-term drivers to watch. The regulatory transition to Workforce Pell and the STATS / Earnings Accountability framework in 2026 will decide which short-term programs keep federal aid.[12][13] The health-care exception keeps medical-office demand growing while general clerical training shrinks.[6] The court-reporting shortage — an aging, thinning stenographer workforce — supports the remaining court-reporting schools, though AI transcription threatens the underlying job.[7][8] And the broader labor cycle and AI adoption together will determine whether office-skills enrollment stabilizes or keeps sliding.[4][6]

Judgment. The narrowly defined secretarial-school industry is a small, mature, slowly shrinking niche with no public pure-play and heavy regulatory dependence — not a growth story on its own. The base case is flat-to-modest growth for generic secretarial training, with better opportunities in specialized administrative roles, medical-office administration, court reporting, employer upskilling, and short-form online credentials. The strongest operators combine low delivery cost, credible outcomes, diversified funding, and disciplined compliance; generic programs dependent on federal aid and expensive lead generation face the weakest outlook. Size the theme to the multi-billion-dollar training market it feeds into, not to the $126-million residue the federal code still labels "business and secretarial schools."[1][4]

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Sources

1. U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 Economic Census (EC2200SIZECONCEN concentration and receipts) and 2023 County Business Patterns, NAICS 611410 (receipts ~$126.2M; 58 firms; 94 establishments; ~1,061 employees; ~$53.7M annual payroll; ~$12.5M Q1 payroll; CR4 67.2% / CR8 80.2% / CR20 94.1% / CR50 99.9%; HHI suppressed); and U.S. Small Business Administration, Table of Small Business Size Standards, 2023 ($20.5M). https://data.census.gov/profile/611410 · https://data.census.gov/table/ECNSIZE2022.EC2200SIZECONCEN · https://www.sba.gov/document/support-table-size-standards
2. U.S. Census Bureau — 2022 NAICS Manual / definition, 611410 Business and Secretarial Schools (scope and cross-references to 611310, 611420, 611430, 611519, 624310). 2022. https://www.census.gov/naics/reference_files_tools/2022_NAICS_Manual.pdf
3. U.S. Census Bureau — County Business Patterns Methodology (coverage; excludes self-employed, private-household, and most government workers). https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cbp/technical-documentation/methodology.html
4. IBISWorld — Business Certification & IT Schools in the US (market ~$6.4B in 2025; multi-year revenue growth; reskilling cyclicality). 2025. https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/business-certification-it-schools/1536/
5. Washington Examiner — "The life and death of a great secretarial school" (Katharine Gibbs: founded 1911, ~50,000 graduates, ~98% early-1980s placement), and Wikipedia, "Gibbs College" (campuses closed 2009; brand fully closed 2011). https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3349888/life-and-death-katharine-gibbs-school/ · https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_College
6. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Outlook Handbook: Secretaries and Administrative Assistants (~3.45M jobs 2024; ~flat 2024–2034; ~358,300 annual openings; median pay ~$47,460, May 2024; medical secretaries projected faster growth). 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/office-and-administrative-support/secretaries-and-administrative-assistants.htm
7. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Outlook Handbook: Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners (little/no change; ~1,700 annual openings). 2024. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/legal/court-reporters.htm
8. Speechmatics, "The court reporter shortage crisis," and National Court Reporters Association statistics/programs (~23,000 stenographers; workforce down ~21%/decade; ~81% over age 50; ~42% fewer schools; ~74% enrollment drop). 2024–2025. https://www.speechmatics.com/company/articles-and-news/court-reporter-shortage · https://www.ncra.org/home/about-ncra/NCRA-Statistics
9. U.S. Department of Education — Financial Value Transparency and Gainful Employment final rule (Federal Register, Oct. 10, 2023; effective July 1, 2024; debt-to-earnings and earnings-premium tests). 2023. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/federal-registers/2023-10-10/final-regulations-financial-value-transparency-and-gainful-employment
10. U.S. Department of Education — 90/10 Rule Questions and Answers (≥10% non-federal revenue; expanded rules for fiscal years beginning on/after Jan. 1, 2023; two consecutive failures → ≥2-year loss of Title IV). https://www.ed.gov/laws-and-policy/higher-education-laws-and-policy/higher-education-policy/9010-questions-and-answers
11. U.S. Department of Education — 2025–2026 Federal Student Aid Handbook, Vol. 2, Ch. 1: Institutional Eligibility. https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/fsa-handbook/2025-2026/vol2/ch1-institutional-eligibility
12. U.S. Department of Education — Accountability in Higher Education… Student Tuition and Transparency System (STATS) and Earnings Accountability (Federal Register, 2026-07-01). https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/federal-registers/2026-07-01/accountability-higher-education-and-access-through-demand-driven-workforce-pell-student-tuition-and-transparency-system-stats-and-earnings-accountability
13. U.S. Department of Education — Final: Accountability in Higher Education… Workforce Pell Grants (Federal Register, 2026-05-19; new short-term-program aid route effective July 1, 2026). https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/federal-registers/2026-05-19/final-accountability-higher-education-and-access-through-demand-driven-workforce-pell-pell-grant-exclusion-relating-other-grant-aid-and-workforce-pell-grants
14. Strategic Education, Inc. (STRA) — 2024/2025 Form 10-K and Annual Report (2024 revenue ~$1.22B; dividend yield ~3%). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1013934/000101393426000006/stra-20251231.htm
15. Adtalem Global Education, Inc. (ATGE) — FY2024/FY2025 Form 10-K (revenue >$1.5B; renaming to "Covista"). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/730464/000155837025010780/atge-20250630x10k.htm
16. Universal Technical Institute, Inc. (UTI) — FY2025 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results (revenue ~$836M). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1261654/000126165425000022/exhibit991-q42025earningsp.htm
17. Perdoceo Education Corporation (PRDO) — FY2024/2025 Form 10-K / results (revenue ~$681M; Colorado Technical Univ., American InterContinental Univ.). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1046568/000119312526059331/prdo-20251231.htm
18. American Public Education, Inc. (APEI) — 2025 Form 10-K (revenue ~$655M TTM; APUS, Rasmussen, Hondros) and Form 8-K, combination of institutions. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201792/000120179226000004/apei-20251231.htm · https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1201792/000110465925006557/tm254578d1_8k.htm
19. Lincoln Educational Services Corporation (LINC) — Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2024 Results (2024 revenue ~$440M, +16.4% YoY). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1286613/000114036126007380/ef20060592_10k.htm
20. Graham Holdings Company (GHC) — 2025 Form 10-K (Kaplan professional/career/test-prep education segment). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/104889/000162828026011405/ghc-20251231.htm
21. Coursera, Inc. (COUR) — 2025 Form 10-K (online business, professional-skills, certificate, and employer learning). https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1651562/000165156226000015/cour-20251231.htm
22. Penn Foster Group — Our Brands and Business Programs (Penn Foster Career School and College; administrative-assistant, bookkeeping, business-management programs). https://www.pennfostergroup.com/our-brands · https://www.pennfoster.edu/programs/business
23. Education Affiliates — company site (Fortis, All-State Career School, and related career-school brands; business/office-administration alongside healthcare and trades). https://www.edaff.com/careers-reasons.php
24. Ancora Education / Lindenwood Education System — About Ancora (Miller-Motte and related career-school brands; Lindenwood acquired Ancora in 2025). https://www.ancora.com/about-us/