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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From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 5)

SM: What have been some of the key points of your more recent strategy? BR: Last summer we ended up hiring the CEO, COO and CFO from the University of Phoenix, the Apollo Group, to help us run Grand Canyon because we did not have any public experience. We had decided to go public so

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