University of Phoenix
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University of Phoenix

The University of Phoenix (UoPX) is a private for-profit university headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. Founded in 1976, the university confers certificates and degrees at the certificate, associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree levels. It is institutionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and has an open enrollment admissions policy for many undergraduate programs. The school is owned by Phoenix Education Partners.

The University of Phoenix was founded in 1976 by John Sperling and John D. Murphy. In 1980, it expanded to San Jose, California, and launched its online program in 1989. Much of UoPX's revenue came from employers who were subsidizing the higher education of their managers. Academic labor underwent a process of unbundling, in which "various components of the traditional faculty role (e.g., curriculum design) are divided among different entities, while others (e.g., research) are eliminated altogether".

In 1994, UoPX leaders made the parent company, Apollo Group, public. Its enrollment exceeded 100,000 students by 1999. Senator Tom Harkin, who chaired hearings on for-profit colleges, said, "I think what really turned this company is when they started going to Wall Street." The sentiment was echoed by Murphy in his book Mission Forsaken: The University of Phoenix Affair with Wall Street. In 2004, Murphy thought that "the University of Phoenix abandoned its founding mission of solely serving working adult learners to admit virtually anyone with a high school diploma or GED." In terms of revenue, UoPX began to rely less on corporate assistance and more on government funding. In 2007, The New York Times reported that the school's graduation rate had plummeted and that educational quality had eroded.

In 2008, Pereira O'Dell became the lead ad agency for UoPX for a reported $220 million. During the 2008–2009 fiscal year, the UoPX student body received more Pell Grant money ($656.9 million) than any other university and was the top recipient of student financial aid funds, receiving almost $2.48 billion. The university's graduation rate was 17 percent, according to federal data that measures first-time, full-time (FTFT) undergraduate students who complete their programs at 150% of the normal time. The University of Phoenix has been the largest recipient of federal G.I. Bill tuition benefits and the largest for-profit recipient by Pell Grant assistance funding.

In 2009, the Department of Education produced a report claiming the untimely return of unearned Title IV funds for more than 10 percent of sampled students. The report also expressed concern that some students register and begin attending classes before completely understanding the implications of enrollment, including their eligibility for student financial aid. In January 2010, the parent company Apollo Group was required to post a letter of credit for $125 million by January 30 of the same year. In 2010, UoPX came under government scrutiny after its Phoenix and Philadelphia campuses were found to have engaged in deceptive enrollment practices and fraudulent solicitation of FAFSA funds.

In 2010, UoPX claimed a peak enrollment of more than 470,000 students with a revenue of $4.95 billion. A 2010 report found that its online graduation rate at the time was only five percent. Later in the year, the university paid $154.5 million for 20-year naming rights for advertising purposes of the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The company terminated the naming rights deal on April 11, 2017, and on September 4, 2018, the stadium's naming rights were acquired by State Farm.

In a December 2010 Bloomberg article, former UoPX senior vice president Robert W. Tucker noted that "at critical junctures, [co-founder] John [Sperling] chose growth over academic integrity, which ultimately diminished a powerful educational model". At its peak, UoPX operated more than 500 campuses and learning sites. The university began to focus on opening new resource centers for online students to provide spaces for alumni to network and current students to seek assistance from professors and peers.

In August 2011, Apollo Group announced it would buy 100% of Carnegie Learning to accelerate its efforts to incorporate adaptive learning into its academic platform. Controversies concerned its marketing and recruitment practices, instructional hours, its status as one of the top recipients of student aid, and a student body carrying the most student debt of any college.

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