University of Phoenix gets too little credit for its efforts

February 8, 2003

The University of Phoenix doesn't get a whole lot of respect from traditional institutions of higher education, but its more than 125,000 students believe that its motto "You can do this!" is the key to a better life for them and their families.

Part of the snooty disdain for UoP -- that's what its friends call it -- comes simply from the fact that it is a for-profit corporation, part of the Apollo Group Inc. "It's not right to make money off education," I've heard people say, but what's wrong about it? The people who work for nonprofit institutions certainly make money doing it, and so they should; why shouldn't the people who create the institutions?

Entrepreneurs, in my experience, are at least as public-spirited as bureaucrats, and at least they make whatever money they spend on doing good instead of taxing it away from other people.

Second, UoP is unabashedly practical; offering degrees in business, human services, nursing and so forth that are designed for working adults who need education tailored to their schedules, not the leisurely rhythm of the four-year campus, lovely though that is for people who can afford it.

And finally, though it is seldom articulated, there's a suspicion that UoP is stealing their students. That fear is probably unwarranted. Karen Spahn, executive director for special research projects, compared enrollment for colleges and universities in metropolitan Detroit for five years before and after Phoenix opened a campus there. Enrollment trends were mostly unaffected, although at some places where enrollment had been flat it began to grow. Spahn thinks it might be that UoP's extensive advertising gets people thinking about going back to college, and some of them who do go, go to another school.

People think of UoP as an online school, but in fact only about a third of the students attend exclusively online, said Larry Banks, vice president and director of the Colorado campus. The rest are "on ground," typically attending one four-hour workshop each week with a faculty member, one meeting each week with their "learning team," a group of five or six classmates that work together on assignments and projects, and the rest of their study time alone or online. Banks calls that "blended delivery."

Phoenix has been in Colorado since 1982, and now has five locations in the state, with about 4,500 students. On ground or online, every student has access to the university's online library. The faculty are practitioners in their fields, with a graduate degree and at least five years' experience. "If you're working on your principal's licensure," Banks said, "your instructor is likely to be a chief financial officer for a local district."

The university also partners with local community colleges. Mary Taylor, who is completing her master's degree in nursing at UoP, is also teaching nursing classes at the Community College of Denver under a joint scholarship program. After her students get their associate degrees, and their RN licenses, they can, if they wish, continue toward a bachelor's degree at UoP with assurance that all their credits will transfer.

"I tell them not to wait 25 years to get a bachelor's degree, the way I did," Taylor said. "And I'm proving to them that "you can do this!" Enrollment in CCD's nursing program is up -- Taylor says she has two sections of each course this year rather than one -- and there's a long waiting list. Since there's also a severe shortage of nurses, that would appear to be good for CCD, for Phoenix and for the community.

Most of UoP's students attend full time while working, which means they take one course at a time, almost year round, and can earn a degree in three years. Some 55 percent to 60 percent graduate -- a number not truly comparable to the graduation rate at schools that enroll mostly traditional students just out of high school, but eminently respectable by the standards of four-year schools.

I wouldn't advocate that the Phoenix model be universally adopted by higher education, and indeed many traditional schools that have tried to offer a version of distance education have floundered because they have so many assumptions to unlearn. But John Sperling, who started the university in 1976 and remains the chairman of its board, saw a need and established a company to fill it. The University of Phoenix deserves more respect than it gets.