Boston University is backing away from the business of continuing professional education, selling its Tyngsboro, Mass.-based Corporate Education Center, which offers corporate training for business professionals, the Austin, Tex. firm TechSkills.

According to university officials, 17 employees were laid off because of the sale, culminating Aug. 21, and were offered severance pay as well as outplacement services. Any employees affected by the TechSkills acquisition of the BUCEC were also able to apply for other positions at BU. If qualified, they were given first preference for the job, officials said.

BUCEC President and Extended Education Associate Dean John Bonanno said he would not comment on how the acquisition would effect employees, staff or students.

BU Executive Vice President Joseph Mercurio said officials felt the BUCEC was not aligned with the teaching aspects of the rest of the university.

“We went in and analyzed the nature of the activities there,” he said. “We met with the Corporate Education Center administration and concluded the types of activities they were engaged in — which were essentially training programs — did not make use of BU’s faculty and was not part of the core aspect part of BU.”

The decision was made to either “shut down the program or find someone who would like to acquire that type of training program,” Mercurio said. New York investment firm McFarland, Dewey and Co. was brought in to find prospective buyers.

TechSkills President and CEO Kevin Baulsen and his team boarded a plane to Boston so “the management team could give me a presentation,” he said.

“Quite honestly, I thought it was a perfect fit for TechSkills,” he said, “so we pursued the acquisition and were successful in coming to terms with Boston University.”

Paulsen said part of the program’s appeal was its “Boston University” brand name.

“The brand recognition was extremely influential in our decision,” he said.

TechSkills has 30 locations in 27 cities and 17 states. He said his company will work to preserve BUCEC’s independence.

“We will see how we can leverage their products into our platform, because they have been so successful as an independent business unit,” he said. “We are delighted to have them on board.”

But Mercurio said the university hopes TechSkills will eventually take over the program completely.

“[We sought] a third party to operate it so that over time, it will disassociate itself from Boston University,” he said. “We wanted BU to get out of that business – we don’t think we belong in that business.”

It still remains unclear how long the BU title, which help make BUCEC an attractive buy for TechSkills, will remain.

“The specifics of the agreement are confidential,” Mercurio said.

He said there is an outlined agreement which will “evolve over time [and] will determine when and how long they use the name,” he said.