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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From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 4)

SM: Has your move to online education met your expectations in terms of your business model? BR: The online educational side is a very profitable model because it is mostly variable costs. In that aspect, it differs from traditional education.

From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 3)

SM: What was the financial structure utilized? Did you raise money? BR: The first year my brother and I, along with two other investors, put in capital that we thought was enough to get the organization to where we thought it needed to be. In 2005, the Department of Education came in and required a

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From Non-profit To IPO: The Turnaround Of Grand Canyon University: Brent Richardson (Part 2)

SM: In 2001 you sold the company. Is that when you ran into Grand Canyon University? BR: We sold, and like most entrepreneurs I had started another company with my brother. That was Masters Online, in which we were using all the things we had learned about the Internet and online education. We were partnering

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