Aug 29, 2014 10:05 AM EDT By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Anthem Education had been struggling to keep their enrollment up, and the for-profit system of colleges has now declared bankruptcy.

According to Inside Higher Ed, the move may have blindsided a number of students and now several state agencies are trying to find them a new school system. Anthem had sold 14 campuses to International Education Corporation (IEC) before declaring bankruptcy, but they may be in danger of losing nine of them.

The U.S. Education Department (ED) must approve such transactions and if they do not do so with Anthem's sale today, those nine campuses will close. By the end of business Thursday, an ED spokesman told Inside Higher Ed they had not received an application for approval. Anthem may also be talking with other for-profit systems about sales of their other 28 campuses.

"The corporate folks didn't really respond to us that well," David Dies, executive secretary of Wisconsin's Educational Approval Board, told Inside Higher Ed. "We oftentimes feel really outgunned as a state regulatory agency when we're dealing with these large corporate institutions."

Spokespersons for Anthem did not comment, but IEC could be trying to acquire as many as 28 campuses. Anthem currently stands to only see 19 of its 41 campuses survive the bankruptcy if they cannot push any acquisitions across.

Dies' campus was left in the dark until the last minute, though he knew Anthem was in trouble. Still, he told Inside Higher Ed he though he would have a month to deal with the campus' closing.

"He was in just as much a state of panic as I was," Dies said of the campus director. "My guess was they were running out of money and the investors basically pulled the plug." "We gotta stop the bleeding and we'll let states deal with the messes that ensue."

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