No surprise whatsoever. They ramped up their spending on ads probably 100x about 10 years ago. They bought a basketball star for a coach, sold naming rights to their sports complex—newly built and upgraded—and leveraged that into widespread billboards and commercials.
Aside: I taught in Phoenix at the time and every graduate from GCU in my subject area without fail was ill-prepared yet supremely confident—a bad combination. It would seem, now that they’re nationwide online, a la University of Phoenix, they’ve become a diploma mill. They also really push the “christian university” angle hard to get into the pockets of those rubes.
No surprise whatsoever. They ramped up their spending on ads probably 100x about 10 years ago. They bought a basketball star for a coach, sold naming rights to their sports complex—newly built and upgraded—and leveraged that into widespread billboards and commercials.
Aside: I taught in Phoenix at the time and every graduate from GCU in my subject area without fail was ill-prepared yet supremely confident—a bad combination. It would seem, now that they’re nationwide online, a la University of Phoenix, they’ve become a diploma mill. They also really push the “christian university” angle hard to get into the pockets of those rubes.