Tuesday, it announced that the university’s enrollment of degree-seeking students grew to 443,000 as of August 2009, up 22 percent from 362,000 in August 2008… The university attributed the sizable increases to a range of factors, including increased efforts in retaining students, expanded marketing, and the "current economic downturn, as working learners seek to advance their education to improve their job security or reemployment prospects." Many community colleges and several of Phoenix’s major peers in for-profit career education, including Kaplan Higher Education (21.9 percent) and Corinthian Colleges, Inc. (24.4 percent), have reported sharp upturns in student enrollments this fall. But given Phoenix’s size and bulk, its increase produces startling numbers that — depending on how things formally shake out in enrollments this fall — would make the for-profit university bigger than the entire California State University System, which had 437,000 students in fall 2008 and was expected to limit enrollments this fall.

Read full article [here].
by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed.

Posted: October 28th, 2009, by: admin. Categories: . Awaiting Comments.