Grand Canyon Education Hires Vince Grell To Lead Partnership Efforts

GCE well-positioned as leader in online program management industry

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Sep 26, 2018, 12:45 ET

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.

SOURCE Grand Canyon Education, Inc.