The story
Founded by John Sperling in 1976.1
Foundation and rapid growth (1970s–2000s)
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.
Enrollment decline, transition to online courses (2010s)
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.
In 2013, the Department of Defense ended its contract with the University of Phoenix for military bases in Europe. U.S. military commanders at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, allowed UoPX representatives to advertise and place promotional materials in high-traffic areas. Access was provided in exchange for the university funding events on army bases, including Easter egg hunts and welcome briefings for newly assigned soldiers.
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Murphy wrote in Mission Forsaken (2013) about the school's degeneration from a provider of working adult continuing education programs to a money making machine whose sole criterion for admission was eligibility for federally funded student loans.
In May 2013, the university's accreditation status was placed on "notice" for a period of two years (with allowed retention of their regional accreditation) by the HLC, due to "insufficient autonomy relative to its parent corporation". The HLC Institutional Actions Council First Committee (IACFC) concerns centered on the university's governance, student assessment, and faculty scholarship in relation to Ph.D. programs. In June 2015, the HLC determined that the University of Phoenix had resolved those concerns.
In 2014, UoPX partnered with 47 historically black colleges and universities to offer UoPX classes that transfer to these institutions. 142,500 students enrolled on August 31, 2016, and 119,938 during the 2016–17 school year. During this time, the university continued to spend tens of millions of dollars on marketing and advertising, including $27 million on internet paid search advertising. The Brookings Institution reported that UoPX spent $76 million on advertising in 2017.
From 2009 to 2015, the University of Phoenix received an estimated $1.2 billion of federal money issued through the G.I. Bill. The university enrolled almost 50,000 such students in 2014, twice as many as any other institution.
In 2015, MarketWatch reported that UoPX students owed more than $35 billion in student loan debt, the most of any US college at the time.
In 2016, the University of Phoenix partnered with the ASIS Foundation to provide scholarships for students studying for security-related degrees. In March 2016, the first ten scholarship recipients were announced. The University of Phoenix also has community partnerships with Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the American Red Cross, and the Junior League.
In 2016, Apollo Education Group shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit against the corporation, arguing that it withheld information leading to large losses in stock prices. Several of the allegations related to UoPX's recruiting of military personnel and veterans.
Between 2010 and 2016, enrollment declined by more than 70 percent amid multiple investigations, lawsuits, and controversies. In 2016, a Brookings Institution study estimated the University of Phoenix's five-year student loan default rate at 47 percent.
Ownership by Apollo Global Management (2016–2025)
In February 2016, Apollo Group announced its sale to a private investment group comprising Apollo Global Management, the Vistria Group, and the Najafi Companies, for $1 billion. Former U.S. Department of Education deputy secretary Anthony W. Miller, partner and chief operating officer of Vistria, became chairman. The sale was approved by both the Department of Education and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). In December 2016, the U.S. Department of Education approved of the sale of Apollo Education Group to Apollo Global Management. The company provided a letter of credit for up to $385 million. In February 2017, after the takeover by Apollo Global Management, UoPX laid off 170 full-time faculty members. According to the 2019 academic report, degreed enrollment was 87,400.
In 2020, UoPX received $6.5 million in CARES Act funding and $7.4 million in the second round of COVID-19 relief funds. In 2020, UoPX began experimenting with micro-campuses, giving the centers a "WeWork vibe".
In 2021, Bloomberg reported that Apollo's higher education investment had gained about 50 percent in value: from its $634 million initial investment to $956 million. UoPX also received $3.4 million in aid through the American Rescue Plan.
In 2021, UoPX continued to close campuses, including Atlanta and Salt Lake City. The Phoenix, Arizona campus was the only location accepting new in-person students. UoPX would later announce that only one campus would remain open in 2025.
On September 20, 2023, the Biden administration canceled nearly $37 million of federal student loan debt for more than 1,200 borrowers who were enrolled at the University of Phoenix between September 21, 2012, and December 31, 2014.
Through the 2023-24 school year, UoPX was the largest for-profit university based on the number of students taking classes for credit, having 156,956 students enrolled under that qualifier. In 2024, UoPX published a survey of its students that found 83% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with their online learning. The university attributed a decrease in enrollment over the past years to the elimination of struggling programs and the de-emphasis of associate degrees.
Phoenix Education Partners, IPO (2025–present)
On August 29, 2025, AP VIII Queso Holdings LP, the new parent company of the University of Phoenix, filed for an initial public offering. The company announced that its name would change to Phoenix Education Partners Inc. before the closing of the offering. The entity began to be traded under the ticker symbol PXED. Phoenix Education Partners received backing from Apollo Global Management.
Prior to its IPO, multiple acquisition proposals were made for the University of Phoenix since 2021, including those by Tuskegee University, UMass Global, the University of Arkansas System, and the University of Idaho. The University of Idaho initially announced a deal worth $685 million to acquire the University of Phoenix in May 2023. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador sued the Idaho State Board of Education, due to alleged violations of Idaho's Open Meetings Law, pausing the acquisition. The lawsuit was first dismissed and later appealed, continuing until the case was eventually dropped due to the decision to abandon the purchase in June 2025. The University of Phoenix reimbursed the University of Idaho for legal fees related to exploring the purchase and paid an additional $15 million to the school for seeking an IPO.
Through its IPO, Phoenix Education raised $136 million, giving the university a market value of $1.48 billion. The offering was oversubscribed, with demand reaching roughly ten times the supply of available shares. Additionally, Phoenix's IPO was among the last to receive SEC approval prior to the 2025 United States federal government shutdown.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Phoenix, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.6