From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 6)

SM: Does your program have offline components as well?

BR: We have a traditional 97-acre campus in the middle of Phoenix. The 1,200 students who we had when I took over the university were the traditional 18- to 23-year-old students that come to Grand Canyon to play baseball or be in the choir. We are just starting to grow that. When I had to do the turnaround, one realization I had to face was that the ground campus is not somewhere where a lot of money can be made. That forced me to grow out the online options.

The student base has stayed around 1,200 for the past four years. That is now starting to grow and will be larger. We are trying to bring it 4,000 students in the next four years. We are basically a traditional university that has an online component. That contrasts with others in the space such as Capella, which does not have a physical university, or Apollo, which offers adult learning in office buildings.

SM: Obviously, two key areas at this stage of your evolution are student retention and student acquisition. What strategies are you following at this point to grow on those two fronts?

BR: In regards to student acquisition, we are following standard strategies for the space. We do purchase leads and we are always trying new things. Obviously, the key for us is our own internal SEO and being able to drive more leads to our sites. We think we have an advantage in that we have a traditional university with a history dating to 1949, and we try to exploit that. We expect that we will continue to do so with events on the campus and will be able to catch the interest of the people we are marketing to.

Another thing that we do differently in education and nursing is that we have enrollment counselors in a lot of states who work directly with school districts and hospitals. They do more of the things we talked about earlier. We get those hospitals to become a client and a payer instead of just going after one student.

On the retention side, we continue to utilize the traditional aspects of the campus. We get people to be part of the university instead of having them just be part of a program. If they are interested in basketball, we get them the scores. If they are interested in a service project we get them interested in a project close to where they are located. We try to tie people to the university as much as we can. We think that will help our retention.

We also do a lot of the same things other schools do around retention. For undergrad students, we are trying to do more tutoring to ensure their skills are in the right place. The biggest thing about retention is getting the right student in the program in the first place. That is an area where we are working really hard. We want students who have a good chance at being successful.

This segment is part 6 in the series : From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson
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