PHOENIX, Sept. 26, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Grand Canyon
Education, Inc. (NASDAQ: LOPE) has hired Vince Grell as Executive Vice President of
University Partnerships to oversee its expansion initiatives as the
newest and largest (by virtue of student enrollment) company in the
online program management (OPM) industry.
Grell has 26 years of operational experience in providing higher
education opportunities in an online environment and joins a GCE
administrative team that has been leading educational
transformation for over 30 years.
GCE already has the largest client in the OPM industry due to
its partnership with Grand Canyon
University (GCU), a private, Christian university with
enrollment of more than 95,000 students. GCU was a small nonprofit
university from its inception in 1949 until 2004, when it found
itself $20 million in debt and about
to close its doors. Under the umbrella of Grand Canyon Education,
the university implemented a unique financial model based on
investment and a hybrid campus environment with traditional
18-year-old students on its Phoenix campus and working adult students
attending online.
On July 1, GCE completed another
unique transaction in which it sold Grand
Canyon University to a nonprofit entity that retained the
GCU name. As part of the transaction, GCE and GCU entered into a
master services agreement allowing GCE to operate as a long-term
service provider to GCU. It also allows GCE and its 2,600 employees
the opportunity to provide similar services to other educational
institutions.
"We have conversations scheduled with several universities about
potential partnerships and believe others will also be interested
once they see the comprehensive services we offer," said GCE Chief
Executive Officer Brian Mueller.
"GCE has the largest platform in the world to deliver education
online and has proven it can operate that at a large scale in an
environment that last year produced 23,000 graduates with low
student debt levels and low loan default rates in more than 230
graduate and undergraduate degree programs, emphases and
certificates."
GCE has invested more than $200
million in the last 10 years to develop online technologies
and operational processes that allow it to scale those services to
hundreds of thousands of students. It offers a full array of client
services that include technology and academic services, counseling
services and support, marketing and communication services, faculty
recruitment and training, admissions, financial aid, and
back-office services such as accounting, reporting, tax, human
resources and procurement services. As the former parent company of
GCU, Grand Canyon Education also has a strong record of regulatory
compliance with the Higher Learning Commission and other
accrediting bodies.
Grell said those comprehensive services set GCE apart in the OPM
market.
"When you look at the phenomenal growth Grand Canyon University has experienced in a short
amount of time, the high caliber of students it has attracted and
its strong record of compliance with accrediting bodies, we're
looking to replicate that with other universities," Grell said. "We
want to identify institutions with strong educational brands that
want to extend that brand by offering their academic programs to
high-quality students in a high-quality online environment, backed
by an administrative team with a proven track record in this
space.
"We believe we can produce those results for our partner
institutions under favorable financial terms that create win-win
situations for the university, GCE and the students that we
serve."
For more information on GCE's services, contact Grell at
602-639-8921 or visit gce.com.
About Grand Canyon Education: GCE is a
publicly traded shared services partner dedicated to serving
colleges and universities. GCE's leadership team has been leading
educational transformation since 1983, and supports partner
institutions' students through operational functions that achieve
organizational growth and student success. GCE can design programs
that serve diverse student bodies on campus or online at the
undergraduate, master and doctoral program levels. These functions
support the complete student life cycle including strategic
enrollment management, academic counseling, financial services,
learning management system support, technical support, student
information system support, compliance, marketing, human resources,
classroom operations, curriculum development, faculty recruitment
and training, among others. For more information, visit
gce.com.
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SOURCE Grand Canyon Education, Inc.