University of Phoenix

The University of Phoenix (UOPX) is an American for-profit institution of higher learning, headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Apollo Group Inc., a publicly traded (NASDAQ: APOL) S&P 500 Phoenix-based corporation that owns several for-profit educational institutions.

The university has 112 campuses worldwide and confers degrees in over 100 degree programs at the associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral levels. The University of Phoenix closed 115 of its campuses in 2013, previously having over 200.

It is one of the largest higher-education providers in North America. Although the university attained a peak enrollment of almost 600,000 students in 2010, a 30-percent enrollment drop in 2011 was attributed to operational changes amid criticism of high debt loads and low job prospects for university students. These changes included allowing students to try classes before officially enrolling and recruiter training programs that are designed to improve student retention and completion rates.

In October 2012, it announced plans to close 115 campuses due to a drastic drop in its profits. The New York Times reported that "enrollments at the University of Phoenix and in the for-profit sector over all have been declining in the last two years, partly because of growing competition from other online providers, including nonprofit and public universities, and a steady drumroll of negative publicity about the sector’s recruiting abuses, low graduation rates and high default rates ... including many charges that the schools enrolled students who had almost no chance of succeeding, to get their federal student aid."

The university has an open-enrollment admission policy, requiring a high-school diploma, GED, or its equivalent as its criteria for admissions. It also provides associate or bachelor's degree applicants opportunity for advanced placement through its prior-learning assessment, through which, aside from previous coursework, college credit can come from experiential learning essays, corporate training, and certificates or licenses. Source: en.wikipedia.org