University of Phoenix has room to grow in W.D.M.

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With six classrooms and 12,000 square feet leased in the Regency Homes building at 6600 Westown Parkway in West Des Moines, the University of Phoenix seems poised for growth in its venture into Central Iowa. But with only 100 students enrolled here after six months of operation, the local branch of the nationwide educational company is off to a modest start.

“It’s my job to make sure we’ve built the infrastructure to support growth,” said university President Laura Palmer Noone, who works at the school’s headquarters in Phoenix but attended last week’s grand opening of the West Des Moines campus. “Nationally, our enrollment has doubled every four years.”

That figure now stands at about 230,000 students, making the University of Phoenix the largest private accredited university in North America. Noone declined to predict future totals, saying only that “we have doubled every four years, but the law of large numbers eventually catches up with you.”

However, she recently remarked in a speech, “We believe any organization that is not growing is dying. Therefore, we want to continue to grow, and my job is to say, all right . . . what do we need to build an infrastructure to support 300,000 or 400,000 or 500,000?”

The Central Iowa location fits into the university’s pattern of opening seven to nine campuses or learning centers per year, Noone said. However, she said the master plan is based on more than a prospective market’s population figure.

“We did an analysis of the Des Moines area and found there are a lot of adults without bachelor’s degrees and a slightly higher unemployment rate,” Noone said. “Iowa has a lot of colleges, but there’s also a need for classes for adult students.”

She said an Omaha branch is planned for later this year or 2006.

The University of Phoenix specializes in courses for employed adults who are seeking to upgrade their business skills. Noone said the most popular course offerings are in undergraduate business, followed by graduate business, information technology, and health and human services.

“Certainly some segments of the population are concerned that we are in direct competition with existing schools, but I think that concern is misplaced,” Noone said. “When we come into a market, everybody else grows, too.” Because the University of Phoenix buys radio advertisements and attracts other media attention, “we expand the market rather than carving it up,” she said.

The school’s location beside Interstate 80 in the most rapidly growing part of Greater Des Moines is a typical choice for the university, Noone said. “We like to locate in Class A space close to a freeway and close to where students live or work,” she said. The university’s business plan calls for renting space rather than purchasing, making future moves easier.

The West Des Moines campus is a “flex net” operation, providing both in-person classroom sessions and online training. A typical class might begin and end with classroom meetings, with three weeks of online work in between.

“Research shows that students learn as much or more in the online portion,” Noone said. “Every student answers every question (when studying online), and study sessions aren’t limited by the clock.”

The school also offers fully online courses, directed by an instructor who logs on to the class site twice a day to answer questions that might come from students anywhere in the world.

The local branch has just one full-time instructor on the staff, with plans to add two or three soon. Seventeen associate faculty members handle most of the teaching load; these teachers have full-time jobs elsewhere. The university requires them to have at least five years of practical experience in the subject they teach and to be employed in that field.

Apollo Group Inc., parent company of the University of Phoenix, is expected to post a 27 percent increase in revenues for the fiscal year ending in August, and early projections call for a 23 percent increase in the 2005-06 fiscal year.

The TCW Group Inc., Sands Capital Management Inc. and T. Rowe Price Associates are among the top institutional holders of Apollo stock. The biggest mutual fund investors are American Century Ultra and T. Rowe Price New Horizons.