For those seeking a conventional, traditional education market publishing experience. - Anonymous employee Cengage Employee Review

3.0
24 Sept 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

If you want to contribute to the creation of widely-used educational software programs and textbooks, this $2-billion revenue-per-year company is one of a half-dozen large educational publishing companies supplying (mostly English-language) schools and colleges worldwide with such materials. Compensation and benefits are competitive.

Cons

If you want to create disruptive technologies, enter non-educational markets, or advance quickly through the ranks, you will struggle against entrenched senior management with short-term objectives. Recently out of bankruptcy, Cengage Learning staff has been trimmed to focus only on guaranteed, 1 to 3-year successes that will please the private equity owners and tickle senior management incentive plans.

Explore other reviews about Cengage

5.0
28 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Total rewards, time off, great people and culture

Cons

Lots of changes and uncertainty at times

3.0
4 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Company has some interesting approaches to the market and in the past they seemed value employees. There are some good employees there and there was, in the past, visionary leadership, but the people with the vision and leadership skills left the company a few years ago.

Cons

The company actively de-values employees. They had a project they called "Project Horizon" where they told all employees they needed to cut costs, so the company was going to have multiple layoffs over 3-5 years - but nobody was allowed to know when, where, or why - - just one day large swaths of people would be gone. That hung over everyone's heads - for years, and is indicative of how Cengage values employees - it doesn't. Everything is about trying to secure new funding and prepare for an IPO, so they stopped investing significantly in the products about 3 years ago and that's about when they stopped acting like they cared about employee wellness as well.

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