The company is trimming the staff from its online services operation, transferring those jobs to existing facilities in Orlando and Chicago, spokesman Ernest Gibble said via email. The affected employees will be allowed to apply for positions at other DeVry institutions in Phoenix, or the other online-services locations.

As of June 30 of last year, the latest figure available, DeVry had 12,117 full- and part-time employees company-wide, according to a securities filing.

While many for-profit colleges are seeing new-student enrollment tumble amid heightened public scrutiny and tighter admissions standards, DeVry’s diverse course offerings have shielded it from some of the losses. DeVry’s Phoenix campus includes its namesake DeVry University, Chamberlain, and Carrington College.

For the spring term, new undergraduate-student enrollment fell 15.4% across all of DeVry University’s locations, but Chamberlain saw its roster of new students jump 31.5% from the prior year. New-student enrollment fell 22.7% at Carrington.

“Online employees can work from anywhere, of course,” Gibble said. “So it made sense to move the online capacity to our other locations so that the on-campus based growth in Phoenix could be accommodated.”

Over the winter, a number of DeVry’s competitors–including Washington Post Co.’s (WPO) Kaplan, Corinthian Colleges Inc. (COCO) and Apollo Group Inc.’s (APOL) University of Phoenix–announced layoffs to help keep operating costs in line with their slumping enrollment.

SOURCE: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/devry-cuts-135-jobs-in-phoenix-office-2011-06-25