LOPE - Is Grand Canyon Education Really the Enron of Education?
Over the past 15 years, no industry has felt the heat of public outcry quite like for-profit education. And that's for good reason as many of the industry's biggest players were using practices that were deemed outright fraud.
But Grand Canyon Education (NASDAQ: LOPE) was different. It had a flourishing physical campus, much better student outcomes, and actually only became for-profit when it ran into funding troubles decades ago.
In 2018, the Arizona-based school split off and became a non-profit -- with a for-profit services arm (that handles non-academic issues like financial aid, counseling, and providing an online platform) that shareholders were left owning. Wall Street liked the idea, tripling shares of the company in the three years leading up to last September.