A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 3)

SM: At this point of your career, the Internet was not yet in full swing but you had done a lot of work with telecom companies. What comes next? HL: I came back to the States in 1991 and headed strategic planning for US West. The biggest focus we had there was building the businesses

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A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 2)

SM: What did you do after you left MIT? HL: I went to another startup company that developed a software application for predicting human behavior. It was very good, so good that it became a top-secret program, and that was the end of the startup for me.

A Public University’s Online Journey: Hunt Lambert of CSU (Part 1)

Hunt Lambert is the Associate Provost of Continuing Education at Colorado State University and CEO of CSU Global Campus. Hunt is the former director of the Colorado State University Entrepreneurship Center and a faculty member of the College of Business. During his businesses career he was part of 25 startups. He teaches strategy and business

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Buying and Selling Online Schools: The Unusual Career of Michael Clifford (Part 7)

SM: How do you handle your regulatory relationships? MC: We have to manage our regulatory relationships very carefully. That is one area where we can lose all of our money.

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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