Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 6)

SM: It sounds as though the best way to get into the online school business is to buy a struggling school that already has accreditation. Is that an accurate statement? MC: Correct. There are only 3,000 regionally accredited schools and most are called Stanford, Harvard, Yale, University of Michigan, etc. It is very rare to

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Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 5)

SM: Who do you consider to be potential acquirers of your schools? MC: Bridgepoint, Grand Canyon, DeVry, Apollo, ITT, Strayer, Touro, EDMC, Capella, and APEI. I believe that most of the big public companies are looking for acquisitions.

Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 4)

SM: Is it fair to say that you focus your time primarily on the strategic planning and long-term outlook of not only your schools but the industry? MC: I spend a lot of time thinking about what degrees are going to be valuable two to three years from now and it just made common sense

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Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 3)

SM: When you were building Bridgepoint, what was the investment thesis you followed? MC: I was involved in the company for the first six years, and the remainder of the time I was just a shareholder. I introduced the guys I recruited at Warburg Pincus, where there was a CEO named Andrew Clark who wanted

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Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 2)

SM: What kind of projects were John Spurling and Brian Miller giving you when you volunteered at the University of Phoenix? MC: I offered to get coffee and help Brian in any way possible. He would kick ideas off me and I would go out and research them. Brian inspired me to go out and

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Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 1)

SM: Take us back to your beginning to give us some context about who you are. MC: I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. My father was a musician and started a radio station, so I grew up around a radio station and music. I never went to college and yet went on to be a

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From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 7)

SM: What is the percentage of students who take courses in residence versus distance learning? BR: It is an 80/20 ratio, with 20% of our students coming from Arizona and 80% coming from elsewhere.

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

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