Introduction
As the largest for-profit education company, and the company that pioneered the modern forprofit education model, Apollo Group, Inc. has the potential to be the industry leader in student success.
Instead the investigation demonstrates that, at least during the period examined, the company invested relatively little in students and struggled to retain Associate degree students. While the company has started to take positive steps in the right direction, more remains to be done.
Company Profile
Apollo Group, Incorporated (“Apollo”) is a publicly traded for-profit educational institution headquartered in Phoenix, AZ. Apollo operates two for-profit college brands, the University of Phoenix and Western International University. In 1994, Apollo became the second for-profit college to become publicly traded. The University of Phoenix accounts for the overwhelming majority of the company’s students and is the Nation’s largest for-profit college. It offers Associate, Bachelor’s, Master’s, and
Doctoral programs in over 100 different fields.1078 Thirty-six percent of Apollo’s students are enrolled in the Associate degree programs, 48 percent in Bachelor’s degree programs, and 16 percent in Graduate level programs.1079 The company’s Associate degree program is exclusively online.1080
Apollo operates over 280 locations, and of these locations, approximately 76 are campuses that provide classes in person. The remaining installations are “learning centers” that provide local resources for students that learn online.
Like more than half of the regionally accredited brands the committee examined, both the
University of Phoenix and Western International University are regionally accredited by the Higher
Learning Commission. The University of Phoenix was first accredited by the HLC in 1978.
The University of Phoenix was founded by John Sperling in 1976 to assist working adults who had some college credit complete college degrees. He founded the company after San Jose State
University, where he was a tenured professor, refused to expand a successful grant program Sperling had run that helped police and firefighters complete degrees at the college.1081 At its founding, the
University of Phoenix required all entering students be at least 23 years old, have at least 2 years of work experience, and have already completed significant credit towards a college degree.1082 The company offered exclusively Bachelor’s degrees. The University of Phoenix offered convenient locations designed to make it easy for working adults to attend classes on existing commuter routes. It offered a “one class at a time” structure, with frequent starts on a rolling basis. A small group of learners would move through the curriculum together, with little or no class selection choice.