Nationally, just 40% of college students earn a certificate or degree within six years of beginning their post-secondary studies, yet at UTI nearly 70% of our students graduate within two years.
While only 47% of those who attend traditional post-secretary of institutions are working in their field of study today, approximately 80% of UTI's graduates go to work in their chosen field after graduation.
As we've outlined in past updates, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the year there are nearly 160,000 new technicians annually needed in our subject areas over the next 10 years.
While technician training will only provide the market with a combined set of credentials of about 50% of those needed to go out into the workforce, this disconnect underscores that the jobs are there, students just need programs designed to match their interest and talents, industrial training that provides the hard and soft skills and credentials employers require and connections to industry opportunities.
In the last three years, we brought innovative agreements with over 4,500 employers offering a range of incentives to attract and retain our graduates.
Over 3,500 of them offer lucrative tuition reimbursement programs up to $25,000.
Valerio itself here, he was among one of the top students in this program, and only one of 12 students Nationwide selected to participate in the most recent Porsche advanced training program.
We've seen similar results during the pandemic for our recent graduating classes coming out of other manufacturer specific advanced training programs, including 98% employment for the Volvo graduates, a 100% employment for Peterborough program, who graduated on October 30.
Candidly, there were times in 2020 where it felt like just staying on our feet was a Herculean task, yet due to the hard work and discovery of new and innovative approaches, all of our 12 campuses in eight states are fully operational and have been serving our students throughout the entire quarter.
Since resuming hands on labs last quarter, we graduated over 2,770 technicians and continue to see high employment rates as the transportation industry continues to serve the nation as critical infrastructure.
To date with the assistance provided by CARES Act funding we've distributed over 12,000 computers and we'll be continuing the program going forward.
It's important to note, that combining the $17.1 million that we've now distributed directly to students in CARES Act emergency grants, with the funds utilized to purchase the laptops for students, $23 million or approximately 70% of UTI's Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund allocation has been distributed directly to students in the form of cash and technology.
On average, once fully ramped, each new welding site launch increases overall student starts by about 1.5%.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that there will be more than 400,000 total job openings for welding over the next decades.
As of October, nearly 80% of our students are on regular course schedules, which means they are no longer making up labs.
This is a dramatic improvement from last quarter, when that figure was running at 40%.
Now nearly 3% of our population are exclusively participating online; again, a significant improvement over the last quarter.
Media inquiries were up 25% in both Q3 and Q4 compared to 2019.
Now, we did see some slowdown due to the election, as the campaigns poured millions, and if not billions of dollars into the marketplace seeking that much coveted 18 to 24-year-old voter.
Not only are increase increasing as noted above, but conversion rates for those increase in the last few months were up nearly 30%.
As far as student starts in the fourth quarter, overall starts trailed 2019, yet were up 1.1% on a comparable basis.
As part of this exercise, we're evaluating in collaboration with the UTI Board of Directors, the opportunity to replace our stock repurchase plan, which was initially set at $25 million and had approximately $10 million of authorization remaining.
As I outlined today in the form of metrics, examples and outcomes, at UTI, we've held ourselves to a high standard in delivering for our students and industry partners for 50 years.
We started 5,772 new students in the fourth quarter, which increased 1.1% year-over-year when adjusting for the extra start that occurred in the 2019 fiscal fourth quarter and was down 10.3% year-over-year including it.
New students scheduled to start increased 6.9% year-over-year for the fiscal fourth quarter, excluding the prior year extra start.
We're looking at start dates from August 31 through the end of September, when over 3,200 new students started the program.
We saw a 14.8% year-over-year increase and exceeded our pre-COVID expectation by almost 7%.
New students scheduled to start for this period increased almost 20% year-over-year and exceeded our pre-COVID expectations by almost 15%.
For fiscal year 2020, we started to 11,283 new students.
While this was down 2.4% as compared to fiscal 2019, I'll point out that we started two-thirds of these students during the pandemic directly into our new blended learning model.
In the fourth quarter we saw improved show rate performance versus the third quarter, with the show rate down 360 basis points year-over-year versus down 400 basis points from the prior quarter.
Similar to starts, we saw markedly better results from the August 31 start date through September with the year-over-year show rate down only 180 basis points for that period.
So far in the first quarter of fiscal 2021, the overall show rate for our most recent start has improved 140 basis points versus the same prior-year pre-COVID period.
For fiscal 2020, show rate was down 220 basis points, with the decline all due to COVID impact in the third and fourth quarters.
We attribute the impact primarily to the fact that roughly 50% of our students relocate to attend our programs, but this increases to 55% to 60% in the fourth quarter, when we start more than half our students for the year, most of them from the high school channel.
During the fourth quarter, we graduated approximately 1,900 students and as of the completion of the most recent course rotation, the percentage of students fully current and not be in makeup labs was 78% versus 40% at the time of our last earnings call.
The percentage of students who were exclusively participating online decreased to 3% versus 13% at the time of our last earnings call.
This progress allowed us to recognize approximately $8 million of the $11 million revenue deferral from last quarter.
However, the net deferral as of the end of the quarter stood at approximately $6 million and reflects additional deferrals during the quarter based upon the varying stages of progression for students who are still at makeup lessons.
As of the end of the quarter, the total number of students on LOA was approximately 700 or 5% total students and are at a consistent level currently.
This compares to approximately 12% at the end of the June quarter and 9% at the time of our last earnings call.
Given the dynamics of COVID, we will likely remain around 5% to 6% of total students in the near term, which is a few points above pre-COVID levels.
Average students for the quarter were 11,251, an increase of 2.9% versus the same period last year.
Total end of period active students was 12,524, a 1.3% increase versus the comparable period.
Revenues for the fourth quarter decreased 12.9% year-over-year to $76.3 million and increased approximately $22 million or 40% sequentially versus the third quarter.
The year-over-year change was primarily driven by the patient student progress in completing in-person labs due to disruptions from the pandemic, which drove the decrease in the average revenue per student of approximately 15%, inclusive of the revenue deferral.
Sequentially, we saw an approximately 13% increase in the average revenue per student.
For the full year, revenues decreased 9.3% to $300.8 million, also primarily driven by the revenue deferral, the overall pace of student progress in completing in-person labs, as well as lower average students due primarily to the COVID-related LOAs in the third quarter.
We prudently controlled costs throughout the quarter, with operating expenses for the quarter decreasing 14.7% versus the prior year to $70.2 million.
Operating expenses for the fiscal year were $304.6 million and decreased 10.2% versus the prior year.
Operating income for the quarter was $6.2 million compared to an operating loss of $5.4 million in the prior year quarter.
Net income for the quarter was $6.5 million, an 18% increase versus the prior-year period.
For fiscal year 2020, net income was $8 million compared to a net loss of $7.9 million in 2019.
As previously noted, our full-year net income includes a $10.7 million tax benefit resulting from the application of revised net operating loss carryback rules from the CARES Act.
Basic and fully diluted earnings per share were $0.10 and $0.09 for the fourth quarter, respectively, and both were $0.05 for the full year.
Total shares outstanding as of the end of the quarter were 32,647,000, slightly higher than the prior quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA was $9.7 million for the quarter as compared to $10.4 million in the prior-year period.
For fiscal year 2020, adjusted EBITDA was $14 million compared to $17 million for fiscal year 2019.
Taking this into account, full-year adjusted EBITDA increased by approximately $2 million year-over-year on a comparable basis.
This is despite $31 million of lower revenue and is a very strong outcome, considering all that transpired in fiscal 2020.
Our balance sheet strengthened further in the quarter with available liquidity of $114.9 million as of September 30, which includes $76.8 million of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents and $38.1 million of short-term held to maturity securities.
This is a $23 million quarter-over-quarter increase, which is consistent with the increase in liquidity we generated in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019.
For the fiscal year, operating cash flow was $11 million, while adjusted free cash flow was $4.3 million, including $9.3 million of capex.
We estimate that cash flow was negatively impacted by $10 million to $15 million for the year due to the timing of tighter fund flows tied to COVID related delays and student progression through the curriculum.
You can see this impact and increase in our tuition receivables versus this time last year, most of which we expect we realized in fiscal 2021.
During the quarter, we completed disbursing the $16.6 million of emergency student funds.
We also allocated $600,000 of the institutional funds for emergency grants to students.
For the remaining institutional funds, we utilized $9.1 million of these funds in the fourth quarter.
Of this amount, $5.7 million was for our student laptop PC program.
We have approximately 900,000 in institutional funds remaining.
To recap the actions completed in fiscal 2020, we completed our Exton campus rightsizing of 71,000 square feet in the first quarter and our home office relocation in 16,000 foot reduction in June.
We gave back the remaining 152,000 square feet for the Norwood campus after closing it in July, and we signed a new lease for our Sacramento campus in September, which will reduce that campus by 128,000 square feet at the end of calendar 2021.
Combined these actions reduce our annual occupancy cost by over $8 million, with all that Sacramento captured in our Q4 run rate.
Our total lease facility portfolio currently stands at 1.85 million square feet.
The net effect of this distribution was to reduce Coliseum's direct and indirect holdings to 24.9% of total UTI outstanding shares on an as-converted basis.
This ownership threshold is important to the Company, at any action involving 25% or more of the Company's total outstanding shares would require a change in control review by the Department of Education.
The shares held by Coliseum and their affiliates are currently limited by a 9.9% voting and conversion cap which can be lifted through further actions by then, and the Company.
Lastly, for the terms governing the preferred shares, the Company has the option to require to conversion of any or all outstanding preferred shares, if the volume weighted average price of the Company's common stock equals or exceeds $8.33 for 20 consecutive trading days.
For both new student starts and revenue, we expect year-over-year growth of 10% to 15%.
For net income, we expect a range of $14 million to $19 million.
For adjusted EBITDA, we expect a range of $30 million to $35 million.
For adjusted free cash flow, we expect a range of $20 million to $25 million, which assumes capex of $15 million to $20 million, approximately two-thirds of the planned capex support high ROI investments, including the two welding programs we are launching in fiscal 2021, enhancements to our online curriculum and our campus optimization efforts.

Summary:
Revenues for the fourth quarter decreased 12.9% year-over-year to $76.3 million and increased approximately $22 million or 40% sequentially versus the third quarter.
Basic and fully diluted earnings per share were $0.10 and $0.09 for the fourth quarter, respectively, and both were $0.05 for the full year.
You can see this impact and increase in our tuition receivables versus this time last year, most of which we expect we realized in fiscal 2021.