Grand Canyon (LOPE) Expects More Than 14% Enrollment in 2023
Grand Canyon Education, Inc. LOPE or GCU has been experiencing enrollment growth, backed by the rise in new starts and an increase in retention numbers. These factors are driven by the company’s labor retention strategies, as well as the availability of ground and online campus services. Recently, the company unveiled that it expected more than 14% year-over-year increase in student enrollment for the 2023-24 session.
GCU anticipates a class of more than 11,000 incoming traditional-age (21 and under) students attending both the Phoenix ground campus and online. This will increase the total estimated enrollment to more than 118,000 comprising approximately 25,800 enrollments in the ground campus and more than 92,000 enrolling for the online campus.
Along with traditional ground and online campus learning environments, GCU also provides hybrid learning methods. The company has worked with industry partners to introduce its Center for Workforce Development to deliver skilled trades training services for careers which involve labor shortages.
The company is optimistic about the anticipated milestone for the 2023-24 session on the back of encouraging additional hiring of faculty and staff during the pandemic rather than the idea of workforce layoff. Also, providing hybrid as well as sole online campus platforms to students for completing an entire program, given the high inflationary environment, is added positive.
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Shares of LOPE have gained 40.8% in the past year, outperforming the Zacks Schools industry’s 25.9% growth.
Grand Canyon’s Growth Initiatives
Grand Canyon have been focusing on accretive initiatives to provide services to the students, which align with the current labor-market opportunities. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the company has introduced 66 new programs across nine colleges at GCU, which focuses directly on the labor market opportunities for students. The enrollment in these programs accounted for 10.8% of the new students enrolled in the second quarter of 2023.
Grand Canyon tends to address workforce shortage issues and focuses on the education, health care, technology, public safety and the military industries, primarily by working with and understanding the employers directly. Also, the company’s approach of moderate raise of the tuition fee, especially during the pandemic, bodes well. Since 2018, online net tuition has increased by merely 1% annually.
Furthermore, in August 2023, GCU opened two new residence halls, Santa Cruz and Copper, for the 2023-24 school session. This brought the total number of multi-stories on-campus residence halls to 32 as of August 2023.
Zacks Rank
Grand Canyon currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).
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