GCU adds an accelerated nursing program site in Chandler, eyes a national expansion

In coming years, Grand Canyon University's main campus in west Phoenix will nearly double in size to around 50,000 students.

Its online programs, which currently enroll roughly 92,000 learners, will expand to about 150,000.

And the university is eyeing a major national expansion by the end of the decade, President Brian Mueller said.

In fact, the university already has begun the process. Mueller's speech came at a ribbon cutting for a GCU learning site in west Chandler Wednesday. He called it a "very big day" for his university, which also has opened outposts in Sun City, Tucson, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City in recent years.

There are about 30 more campuses that currently operate under Grand Canyon Education, a for-profit educational services venture, in partnership with numerous private universities across the country.

Those learning sites aren't technically GCU-branded, university officials said, but Mueller still mentioned them while speaking about his plans for the university's future.

"We're halfway through," he told The Republic. "We have 40 locations stood up and we're going to open up another 40 in the next five or six years."

A national expansion could serve as the next step in GCU's transformation. Two decades ago, the school was a struggling university on the verge of bankruptcy. Later, it become a for-profit school that performed well on the stock market despite economic downturns. Now, it is one of the largest Christian universities in the country and sits on firm financial footing.

"God has been unbelievably good to us," Mueller said.

But expansion can also be difficult, and GCU has already faced controversy while trying to build out its main campus. Most recently, it was criticized for closing a mobile home park at 27th Avenue and Colter Street that it purchased in 2016.

The university had planned for years to build student housing on the land, but some residents, city staff and nonprofit leaders fought the move, fearing entire households could end up homeless amid a region-wide affordable housing crisis.

Of the 40 learning sites yet to come, Mueller expects about 30 will be university-branded, with the remainder under Grand Canyon Education. The university is considering campuses in a variety of states, including Missouri, Kansas and Florida, Mueller said, but is still going through accreditation processes.

So far, all of the new learning sites are home to accelerated nursing programs, which university officials say will help tackle a national shortage of health-care professionals. But it may not just be nurses on site for long. Mueller said he expects that GCU eventually will offer additional programs at its outposts.

"The programs we select will be selected by the nature of the learning," he said. "If it requires some online learning and some face-to-face learning, those are the programs that we would open up at these locations. We call these our hybrid campuses."

A 20-year turnaround for GCU

In 2004, GCU was on the brink of bankruptcy.

The school, which was founded in 1949, had $20 million in debt and fewer than 1,000 students on its campus. To survive, it took on investors and became a for-profit university. Later, it was incorporated as a publicly traded company, using its profits to reinvest into its campus and online programs.

A decade later, Grand Canyon Education sold the university to a nonprofit entity that retained the GCU name. By regaining its nonprofit status, the university saved money on property taxes, gained access to research opportunities and grants afforded to nonprofit schools, opened up to philanthropy and was able to play in Division I NCAA sports.

Now, GCU competes with Arizona State University. ASU is the largest public university in the state, and the two schools jockey for students from the Valley, California and other Western states.

"I think we have two of the most innovative educational institutions in the country, right here in Arizona," Mueller said. "We have the largest state university in the country, and now we have the largest private university in the country. And we need to utilize that."

Why nursing programs?

GCU's learning sites for future nurses come as Arizona, and the nation, struggles with a shortage of health-care professionals.

Nurses, in particular, are needed. Last year, Arizona ranked among states across the country with the most severe health-care staffing shortages, and demand for specialized nurses is expected to continue to grow in coming years, according to the Arizona Board of Nursing.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates there will be nearly 200,000 openings for registered nurses in Arizona from 2021 to 2031.

University officials hope they can fill some of those positions with accelerated nursing program graduates. The 16-month program is designed for people with a non-nursing college education.

But training nurses on a large scale is difficult, said Lisa Smith, dean of GCU's College of Nursing and Health Care Professions — mostly because doing so is expensive.

"The scalability piece really requires a lot of financial backing from the parent organization, because putting all of this together — paying for faculty, putting all the resources to ensure you've got a solid program — is not cheap," she said.

Nursing schools are also largely judged on graduates' first-time pass rate of registered nurse licensure exams, Mueller said. That has incentivized most schools to keep their numbers "small and elite."

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For a few years, those pass rates plagued GCU. In 2017, the university was censured by the state nursing board after its graduates slipped below the state's standards for passage rates on the registered nurse licensing exam for two years in a row.

Since then, the university has revamped its curriculum and hired more faculty. Smith now sits on the state nursing board, and GCU's main campus nursing program saw an 88% pass rate last year. Its Tucson campus had a pass rate of 98% and its Sun City campus saw a 95% pass rate. The state minimum is an 80% pass rate.

Mueller said despite the school's past "hiccup," he is confident that GCU can scale its accelerated nursing program successfully. He envisions the program pulling entire families out of poverty and offering opportunities to "students with 3.6, 3.7 GPAs" that may get eliminated from other nursing programs, even though they can "absolutely" do the job.

"The thing I love about the nursing program is that there's no lying about it," Mueller said. "You either get the graduation rates and you get the first-time pass rates on the exam or you don't. And so we're growing in a way that enables us to maintain that quality."

He also sees the program making money. He expects GCU's learning sites will be profitable by the end of this year, he said.

'A big win' for Chandler

When Chandler Mayor Kevin Hartke first took office in 2018, his city had many employers but few higher education institutions beyond Chandler Gilbert Community College.

That made creating partnerships with colleges and universities a top goal for the city. Hartke said attracting higher education to Chandler has remained a constant target in the city's recent strategic plans, which act as priority lists put together by municipal leaders.

"We know partnerships with higher education institutions like GCU are important for a lot of reasons," he said. "They provide our residents with opportunities to gain knowledge and skills to pursue their career goals. They help us and other cities build their talent pipeline to meet the labor needs of employers throughout Chandler and the greater Chandler region."

In recent years, city leaders have been met with some success. The University of Arizona now has an outpost in downtown Chandler and ASU opened an entrepreneurship center and incubator program in the city last month, also near downtown.

GCU's learning site, at 4100 W. Chandler Blvd., will be the first higher education option to open in west Chandler.

"GCU coming to Chandler is a big win for us, and it's a big win for our community," Hartke said. "As has been stated, health care is such an important, key industry across the region, and especially in Chandler. We have such a growing need for health-care services."

Sasha Hupka covers higher education for The Arizona Republic. Do you have a tip on Arizona's universities, community colleges or trade schools? Reach her at sasha.hupka@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @SashaHupka. Follow her on Instagram or Threads: @sashahupkasnaps.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Grand Canyon University eyes major national expansion by end of decade